tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378Thu, 17 Aug 2017 15:21:32 +0000conceptssolutionsSciTechHealthGeneticsInfrastructureagriculture3DPrintingalternative economyITInternetGlobalistsdiyBioorganicbusinessEnergyGMOLocalWelfareaquaculturehackerSpacesThailandbigAgribiotecheconomicsDronesJapanMakerspacesOpenSourceboycotteducationpropagandatelecomAICubaDARPADangersEntertainmentHavanaIPMITOCWOSartificialIntelligenceauto industryclimate changecolor revolutionscommunicationscommunityGardenscorbett reportfintechgloblaistsinfowarmachineLearningpermaculturepost scarcitysingularityLocalOrghttp://localorg.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)Blogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-2241038244433146416Thu, 17 Aug 2017 15:21:00 +00002017-08-17T08:21:32.459-07:00agriculturebigAgrisolutionsGMOs and Big-Ag: Stop Being Scared, Start Getting Your Hands Dirty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>August 17, 2017</b> (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Urban farmer Curtis Stone who runs <a href="http://www.greencityacres.com/">a successful urban agriculture business</a> as well as workshops and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-BlDCX__nCLs_ZF9meYQbw">free online videos</a> to help others join the urban agriculture revolution, has recently put out a very positive message regarding GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in the context of big-agricultural monopolies and what we can do about it.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAMF6A07Nao" width="560"></iframe></div><br />His underling message is to stop being paralyzed by fear and to start making a real difference by simply getting out from behind our computers, getting our hands dirty, and making with our own two hands the sort of world we want to live in.<br /><br />He says so as part of a tangible movement producing alternatives to big-ag and big-retail that have turned the tide against monopolies and have given people a chance at building their own value for themselves and their communities.<br /><br />While his message was specifically about GMOs and the agricultural sector, his wisdom easily carries over to virtually all other aspects of modern socioeconomic activity.<br /><br /><b>Break the Wheel&nbsp;</b><br /><br />It is a positive message that has been gaining traction as more and more people become frustrated with circular political debates, endless protests, and paralyzing fearmongering, all while the same handful of powerful interests benefit - far removed from the chaos they sow below.<br /><br />Abusive monopolies are so, simply because they have the wealth and influence to be abusive. This wealth is gained by millions of people in the United States and around the world paying them for their goods and services month-to-month. This concentration of wealth was not accomplished overnight, and it will not be undone in an election, with the passage of a bill, or anything less than its undoing through decentralization and localization. <br /><br />Reducing the wealth and influence of monopolies - regardless of industry - thus reducing their ability to abuse, requires directing our monthly income away from them and toward local alternatives.<br /><br />Money channeled to local farmers around the world instead of a handful of ag-giants and retailers, means the wealth these current monopolies use to lobby, manipulate public perception, bribe, and otherwise coerce public policy with, no longer exists. It is wealth through local entrepreneurship that can be used as local people see fit.<br /><br />Local alternatives create a decentralized version of the centralized monopoly they seek to replace, meaning that no single business has in its own hands the sort of wealth and influence existing monopolies currently enjoy. This creates a better balance of power and deters the sort of abuses excessive disparity invites.<br /><br />Curtis Stone and others encourage people to create value and wealth for themselves instead of obsessing over political discourse, ideology, and fear. And the more people who choose self-empowerment over circular conflict, the more actual leverage we will have individually and collectively when actors such as agricultural monopolies, tech giants, or the defense industry attempt to coerce a people, a nation, or even a world into action that benefits none but a handful of monopolies.&nbsp;</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/gmos-and-big-ag-stop-being-scared-start.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6403716060817100023Wed, 02 Aug 2017 18:31:00 +00002017-08-02T11:31:57.245-07:00HealthGeneticsNo Matter How Bad You Thought Big-Phama Was, This is Worse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">A literal cure for cancer has been funded by charity, stolen by big-pharma, to be dangled over the head of the dying for profit.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">August 2, 2017</b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;(<a href="http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/08/no-matter-how-bad-you-thought-big-phama.html">Tony Cartalucci - LD</a>) - Impropriety among big-pharmaceutical corporations has ranged from multi-billion dollar bribery rackets, to marketing drugs to patients for uses they were never approved for by regulators, to covering up known dangerous side-effects of medications they produce and sell.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br /><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M_wCDNttBco/WYIPYA9wFCI/AAAAAAAAQBA/DNjYEomuiCgvtg6eQzU3X1l2pHHqdaqCgCLcBGAs/s1600/4-YEARS-CANCER-FREE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #6fa8dc; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1140" height="398" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M_wCDNttBco/WYIPYA9wFCI/AAAAAAAAQBA/DNjYEomuiCgvtg6eQzU3X1l2pHHqdaqCgCLcBGAs/s640/4-YEARS-CANCER-FREE.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">More recently, big-pharma has been embroiled in a series of price-gouging controversies over equipment and treatments. This includes the hijacking of and profiteering from a revolutionary new treatment called gene therapy.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Gene therapy, the process of re-engineering human cells to either include missing DNA to cure genetic conditions or to arm the immune system to seek and destroy disease, has been the latest hopeful technology scooped up and plundered by big-pharma.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br /><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J9MAmUjgKHM/WYIXVz_6XeI/AAAAAAAAQBc/2ei9hnnSMfodn9lmx0w-3fOH_Q7wmfmEQCLcBGAs/s1600/gene-therapy-10-638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #6fa8dc; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="638" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J9MAmUjgKHM/WYIXVz_6XeI/AAAAAAAAQBc/2ei9hnnSMfodn9lmx0w-3fOH_Q7wmfmEQCLcBGAs/s640/gene-therapy-10-638.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Gene therapy promises a single shot cure to many of the diseases that have confounded humanity the most - everything from diabetes to cancer, to blindness, deafness, and even various effects of aging.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">At least two treatments using gene therapy have been approved for European markets.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">A third that has proven in clinical trials to provide permanent remission for leukemia patients who were unresponsive to chemotherapy, appears to be close to FDA approval.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The Literal Cure for Cancer, Dangled Over the Dying&nbsp;</b><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">While the treatment - even under experimental conditions - costs approximately $20,000 to produce, pharmaceutical giant Novartis has swooped in and industry experts anticipate a markup leaving the price tag between $300,000-600,000.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br /><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nv8bEOxurWI/WYIT29bpISI/AAAAAAAAQBU/pNkVg1OhhNEXtzrGkxh99mWIyzYT0BJYQCLcBGAs/s1600/s4.reutersmedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #6fa8dc; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="728" height="380" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nv8bEOxurWI/WYIT29bpISI/AAAAAAAAQBU/pNkVg1OhhNEXtzrGkxh99mWIyzYT0BJYQCLcBGAs/s640/s4.reutersmedia.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The New York Times in a 2012 article titled, "</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/health/a-breakthrough-against-leukemia-using-altered-t-cells.html" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">," reported that (emphasis added):</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i><b>Dr. June said that producing engineered T-cells costs about $20,000 per patient — far less than the cost of a bone-marrow transplant.</b>&nbsp;Scaling up the procedure should make it even less expensive, he said, but he added, “Our costs do not include any profit margin, facility depreciation costs or other clinical care costs, and other research costs.”</i></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">More recently, in a July 2017 Washington Post article titled, "</span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-gene-therapy--a-true-living-drug--on-the-cusp-of-fda-approval/2017/07/11/bd7872a0-618a-11e7-a4f7-af34fc1d9d39_story.html?utm_term=.b3f8c0e34002" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">First gene therapy — ‘a true living drug’ — on the cusp of FDA approval</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">," its reported that:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i>Novartis has not disclosed the price for its therapy, but analysts are predicting $300,000 to $600,000 for a one-time infusion. Brad Loncar, whose investment fund focuses on companies that develop immunotherapy treatments, hopes the cost does not prompt a backlash. “CAR-T is not the EpiPen,” he said. “This is truly pushing the envelope and at the cutting edge of science.”</i></blockquote><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">But it isn't Novartis that's "pushing the envelop," or at "the cutting edge of science." Charity-funded university researchers are.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"></b><br /><a name='more'></a><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Stealing From Charity&nbsp;</b><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The New York Times and the Washington Post both appear to give Novartis credit for this breakthrough in their article, with NYT claiming that the company invested some $20 million on a research center to bring the treatment to market. However, that appears not to be entirely true.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br /><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5TH_kY1nwQ/WYIPKTiqv1I/AAAAAAAAQA8/McdXPB3OpNMcOKa4VAgFqFWc1dt9x_e3gCLcBGAs/s1600/LLS08040127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #6fa8dc; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5TH_kY1nwQ/WYIPKTiqv1I/AAAAAAAAQA8/McdXPB3OpNMcOKa4VAgFqFWc1dt9x_e3gCLcBGAs/s640/LLS08040127.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">It was, in fact, the Leukemia &amp; Lymphoma Society (LLS) that funded the initial work toward this breakthrough, beginning in the late 1990's and committing some $21 million to the effort.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><a href="https://www.lls.org/who-we-are/our-partners-sponsors" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">Novartis is indeed a partner</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;of LLS, but according to LLS' own annual reports (</span><a href="http://www.lls.org/sites/default/files/National/USA/Pdf/LLS_SIT_AR_2016.pdf" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">2016, PDF</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">), it is listed under the second tier of donors - providing between $500,000-900,000 out of the total $35.6 million LLS received in direct gifts that year. In some years Novartis has donated even less.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">LLS itself,&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.lls.org/news/immunotherapy-study-funded-leukemia-lymphoma-society-demonstrates-remarkable-results" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">in a 2014 press release</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">, stated:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i>LLS has invested in the work of June and colleagues since 1998 and has committed to investing a total of $21 million through 2017 to get this first treatment to more patients. LLS first funded Grupp in 1992 through its career development program. LLS has also been funding another member of the team, David Porter, M.D. of University of Pennsylvania since 1994.</i></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Elsewhere, LLS reports cite that this breakthrough in curing leukemia has "attracted" Novartis as a partner, never mentioning that Novartis is actually a long-term LLS partner.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">In reality, it appears pharmaceutical corporations like Novartis are using charities like LLS to fund research and development that corporations themselves should be investing in. Instead, Novartis and others are poaching public and charity-funded research and breakthroughs, profiting from what is often decades of dedicated and difficult work.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Beyond LLS' partners, it receives millions of dollars annually from other donors ranging from businesses unrelated to the pharmaceutical industry, to fundraising events held nationwide, to families and individuals who have experienced cancer either themselves or through a family member or friend.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The research and breakthroughs LLS funds belong to all of its donors. How the work it funded has ended up in the hands of a single corporation, facing a mark up of anywhere between 15-30 times its cost during experimental trials demands scrutiny and a detailed explanation.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Why Big-Pharma is Gouging Gene Therapy &nbsp;</b><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Gene therapy overall threatens the fundamental business model pharmaceutical giants are built on - that is to perpetually peddle medication that covers up the symptoms of disease rather than outright curing it.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">It is a business practice that provides profits easily predicted quarter to quarter, with some medications leading to complications big-pharma also has a pill for. Something that treats a patient permanently with a single, inexpensive shot constitutes big-pharma's worst nightmare.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br /><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qgiG9adxZKM/WYISv3YyOXI/AAAAAAAAQBI/XDcTlG_rf8A_iYmgs5awWAsvihnqYrrewCLcBGAs/s1600/2013-5-24_GSK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #6fa8dc; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="1279" height="358" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qgiG9adxZKM/WYISv3YyOXI/AAAAAAAAQBI/XDcTlG_rf8A_iYmgs5awWAsvihnqYrrewCLcBGAs/s640/2013-5-24_GSK.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="640" /></a></div><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">MIT Technology Review in an article titled, "</span><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608349/a-first-of-a-kind-gene-therapy-cure-has-struggled-to-find-a-market/" style="background-color: white; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-decoration-line: none;">A First-of-a-Kind Gene Therapy Cure Has Struggled to Find a Market</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">," tells the tale of another pharmaceutical corporation - GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), of another revolutionary gene therapy it scooped up from research done by others, its $665,000 price tag, and why GSK - along with the rest of big-pharma - are disinterested in gene therapy.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The article notes:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i>[Alex] Pasteur [investor with F-Prime Capital Partners and interim CEO of Orchard Therapeutics] also says revenues for a rare-disease gene therapy might only ever add up to $100 million a year. Because GSK brings in $36 billion a year, Pasteur is not surprised the company is looking elsewhere for revenue. “These are pimples on the back of a whale,” he says. “But the assets could be very interesting for someone else.”</i></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Indeed, a single shot that costs only a few thousand dollars and permanently cures people of virtually every human health infliction not only isn't profitable, but will likely put these enormous, abusive monopolies out of business for good.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Obamacare vs Turmpcare: Nobody Cares, But Innovation Cures &nbsp;</b><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Education is the first step in combating the hijacking and burying of gene therapy and other innovations.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">At a time when people arguing over Obamacare versus Trumpcare are realizing that&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">no one</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;actually cares about their health more than they themselves, innovation like gene therapy offers to make healthcare so affordable and effective, insurance schemes and government subsidies would be unnecessary.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">But gene therapy will only gain traction if the wider public knows about it, including its implications for not only improving their own health, but improving the healthcare systems of their respective nations.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The public must also understand the true costs behind gene therapy and where money for research has come from - often from public funding or charity. This knowledge allows the public to call out pharmaceutical corporations attempting to seize credit and profits entirely for themselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">While pharmaceutical corporations invest inordinate amounts of money attempting to convince the world that they are indispensable, university researchers funded by public money and charity prove they are more often than not setting breakthroughs back, not moving them forward.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">If the good people involved in LLS are capable of raising the money to fund these breakthroughs, they are capable of creating a pharmaceutical trust that can bring these cures to market with greater transparency and oversight.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Healthcare debates focused purely on political solutions and debates are frustrating. Getting behind gene therapy and other tangible healthcare innovations is something people can better invest their time, money, energy, and attention into instead.&nbsp;</span></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/no-matter-how-bad-you-thought-big-phama.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6037811246136838048Fri, 26 May 2017 14:32:00 +00002017-05-26T08:02:03.535-07:00auto industryEnergyWhat's Really Behind Assault on Tesla Factory "Safety?" <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;">Fronts representing big-oil and big-auto are spearheading a widening PR campaign targeting electric car manufacturer and alternative energy company Tesla.&nbsp;</span><br /><b><br /></b><b>May 26, 2017</b> (LocalOrg) - Alternative energy company Tesla which includes US-based electric car development and production, battery production, and now also includes residential solar panel and battery systems previously under SolarCity, represents a simultaneous threat to several cornerstones of Western corporate-financier monopolies.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wZfEVz_odYU/WSg2GRSpuQI/AAAAAAAAP10/Jd4pO7RaNlQUUkOBHVXHa6SVo6SWEtvhACLcB/s1600/tesla-tilburg-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1013" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wZfEVz_odYU/WSg2GRSpuQI/AAAAAAAAP10/Jd4pO7RaNlQUUkOBHVXHa6SVo6SWEtvhACLcB/s640/tesla-tilburg-8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Openly seeking to replace big-oil and big-auto, it was only a matter of time before Tesla's&nbsp;co-founder, CEO, and product architect Elon Musk attracted the negative attention of both of these deeply rooted and corrupt industries.<br /><br />The genuine enthusiasm for Tesla and its products versus the paid-for media campaign to obstruct or even reverse Tesla's influence on energy and transportation has been a see-sawing battle unfolding just beneath the surface.<br /><br />More recently, attempts to further complicate Tesla's US-based manufacturing facility in California have been spearheaded by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), an organization that attempts to pass itself off as a labor union.<br /><br />Part of this campaign has included several "investigations" carried out by both the corporate media and various organizations like Worksafe - an opaque organization claiming to advocate workplace safety - which recently published a report regarding worker safety at Tesla's California factory. The report was widely promoted across the corporate media in what appears to be a concerted attempt to single out and undermine Tesla.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fkJxf_WvkB4/WSg4je9PIwI/AAAAAAAAP2A/2feS7fRo9lAwiM_ZV9WHjKR9rfxuwM5swCLcB/s1600/tesla_worksafe_report-1024x503.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="1024" height="314" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fkJxf_WvkB4/WSg4je9PIwI/AAAAAAAAP2A/2feS7fRo9lAwiM_ZV9WHjKR9rfxuwM5swCLcB/s640/tesla_worksafe_report-1024x503.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Attempts to ascertain Worksafe's affiliations and funding yielded only <a href="http://www.worksafe.org/support/index.html">an ambiguous disclosure on its website</a> stating:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Worksafe is allied with a advocacy groups, scientists and academic experts, unions and labor activists, diverse working communities, like nail salon technicians and car wash workers, environmentalists, legal aid programs - and you.</i></blockquote>That UAW featured Worksafe's report <a href="https://uaw.org/report-worksafe-internal-tesla-data-shows-injury-rates-fremont-facility-significantly-higher-national-average/">prominently on the front of its website</a> gives us clues to just which "unions" Worksafe is "allied with." It appears to be part of a wider campaign by UAW to create a "union" at Tesla, described in a Bloomberg article titled, "<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-16/uaw-sends-organizers-to-aid-tesla-worker-push-to-unionize-plant">Tesla Workers' Union Push Gets UAW Support at California Plant</a>," which states:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The United Auto Workers has sent organizers to help employees organize Tesla Inc.’s electric-car plant, a move that -- if successful -- would give the union the presence it’s long sought beyond legacy U.S. automakers’ factories.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>A group of Tesla workers have contacted the union to seek assistance organizing, and the UAW is in discussion with them, Dennis Williams, the union’s president, told reporters during a roundtable Thursday in Detroit. He said union organizers have received complaints about long hours and potentially unsafe conditions at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California.</i>&nbsp;</blockquote><br /><b>UAW is a Wall Street Trojan Horse Disguised as a Labor Rights Advocate&nbsp;</b><br /><br />While UAW poses as a labor union, in reality, UAW is nothing of the sort.<br /><br />It is an&nbsp;American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) affiliate, with AFL-CIO representing perhaps the most successful Wall Street-devised attempt to date to infiltrate, co-opt, and commandeer legitimate labor unions and movements not only in the United States, but through funding and association with the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), all across the entire planet.<br /><br />A more in-depth example of this can be examined via Democracy Now's 2005 report, "<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/26/unholy_alliance_the_afl_cio_and">Unholy Alliance? The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela</a>," and specific mention of the UAW within NED programs can be found on NED's own webpages for <a href="http://www.ned.org/region/eurasia/russia-2006/">Russia</a> and <a href="http://www.ned.org/region/asia/asia-regional-2007/">Asia</a>. <br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>The National Endowment for Democracy represents <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/06/24/the-national-endowment-for-democracy-not-national-and-not-for-democracy/">some of the largest, deepest entrenched corporate financier interests on Earth</a>, including big-oil and big-auto. The conflict of interest - even at face value - should be prominently featured in any and all news regarding UAW's growing &nbsp;row with Tesla. Yet it is not.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vng39gEK024/WSg1d2CVz1I/AAAAAAAAP1s/urwWYzhi_U4cbv5nYD90R95kAfrEcS-ngCLcB/s1600/NEDcorporateInterests_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1131" data-original-width="1600" height="452" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vng39gEK024/WSg1d2CVz1I/AAAAAAAAP1s/urwWYzhi_U4cbv5nYD90R95kAfrEcS-ngCLcB/s640/NEDcorporateInterests_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Image: </b>Big-oil and big-auto are both well represented by NED's corporate sponsors and chairpersons. That its affiliates through the AFL-CIO and UAW are applying pressure on up and coming competitor Tesla is precisely why NED and its network of faux rights and labor advocacy fronts were created for.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table>The UAW specifically is listed throughout the NED's various international programs as being in direct cooperation with NED in supplanting and dominating foreign labor movements.<br /><br />Just as NED exploits and abuses human rights advocacy to advance US special interests across the globe, it uses AFL-CIO and faux-unions like UAW to exploit and abuse labor issues to hide its self-serving agenda behind. Key to the success of such schemes is complicity across the corporate media - which goes far in explaining why obvious conflicts of interests regarding UAW and entrenched big-auto corporations are never mentioned in corporate media reports.<br /><br />Undermining a relatively independent, disruptive company like Tesla by leveraging alleged labor concerns is par for the course regarding AFL-CIO and UAW - and is in fact why fronts like NED, AFL-CIO, and UAW were created for in the first place.<br /><br />While labor issues are a legitimate concern upon every factory floor on Earth, attempts to address them must be done in a transparent and honest manner via legitimate and independent third parties. The AFL-CIO and UAW attempting to push labor issues regarding Telsa, and even attempts by both to create a "labor union" at Tesla are neither legitimate nor independent. <br /><br />The UAW - a faux-labor union created by and for the very special interests organized labor is supposed to serve as a check against - would be comparable to Elon Musk creating a labor union at a General Motors or a Ford factory. Wider public awareness of both this current attempt to target Tesla, and the wider corruption, exploitation, and abuse of labor advocacy by AFL-CIO and UAW will help remove this insidious tool from the hands of special interests and place labor advocacy back into the hands of the workers where it belongs.&nbsp;</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/05/whats-really-behind-assault-on-tesla.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6607494352049899399Thu, 27 Apr 2017 09:52:00 +00002017-04-27T02:52:38.653-07:00alternative economyconceptseconomicsEnergyPutting Tesla’s EV Car Recall into Perspective<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>April 27, 2017</b> (<a href="http://wishful-thinking.org/index.php/2017/04/26/putting-teslas-ev-car-recall-into-perspective/">Wishful-Thinking</a>) -&nbsp;News coverage about electric car manufacturer Tesla’s recent recall of over 50,000 vehicles over potentially faulty parking brakes has followed a narrative summed up by articles like Ars Technica’s, titled, “<a href="https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/04/telsa-recalls-53000-vehicles-built-in-2016-over-faulty-parking-brake/">Its Always Some Else’s Fault — Tesla recalls 53,000 vehicles built in 2016 over faulty parking brake</a>.”<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UtrT9ZFpZBc/WQG97_pgj0I/AAAAAAAAPnw/Pg7R9njwrK0QCxI0ZuGgAPmTYkH5z5w0gCLcB/s1600/Front_Grill-1440.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UtrT9ZFpZBc/WQG97_pgj0I/AAAAAAAAPnw/Pg7R9njwrK0QCxI0ZuGgAPmTYkH5z5w0gCLcB/s640/Front_Grill-1440.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br />In it, Ars Technica claims:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Tesla is voluntarily recalling 53,000 Model S and Model X electric vehicles because of problems with the parking brake. As was the case for Tesla’s last recall, the company is blaming someone else for the issue. Specifically, the electric parking brakes installed on the EVs “may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier.”</i></blockquote>It also notes that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Quality control issues have plagued the young carmaker. Both the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports lambasted the Model X, and many electric motors in early Model S sedans appeared unable to last more than 60,000 miles.</i></blockquote>What Ars Technica and other publications have failed to do, however, is put the Tesla recall into context. According to a 2016 U.S. News article titled, “<a href="https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/biggest-car-recalls">The Biggest Car Recalls in History</a>,” such context is provided.<br /><br />Not only have other car manufacturers faced recalls many times larger (with millions of cars recalled at a time), the largest recall in automotive manufacturing history involved faulty parts used by multiple auto companies supplied by a third-party company, not unlike Tesla’s current recall.<br /><br />U.S. News would report:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>More than two dozen automakers were forced to recall close to 70 million vehicles in the biggest auto recall in U.S. history after receiving reports of a defect in airbags from Japanese supplier Takata. Honda recalled the most vehicles – more than six million – but Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Mazda, and others sent letters to owners while grappling with a supply shortage.</i></blockquote>However, as Ars Technica pointed out, Tesla is a “young automaker,” while other companies have been established for decades, facing multiple gargantuan recalls in their respective histories, and still facing them regularly despite what many analysts have claimed Tesla lacks, “experience” with quality control.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Ars Technica does point out that Tesla owners are unphased by the recall, apparently immune to sensationalism dressed up as analysis. Tesla owners also appear capable of understanding the long-term value of both Tesla’s vehicles and the company itself.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fm2JYpZ_KD8/WQG-HB5CJOI/AAAAAAAAPn0/jSteAypXXHsxGbVmdVtoHACTo_ltLR-owCLcB/s1600/musk-car.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fm2JYpZ_KD8/WQG-HB5CJOI/AAAAAAAAPn0/jSteAypXXHsxGbVmdVtoHACTo_ltLR-owCLcB/s640/musk-car.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br />In terms of reliability, it seems recalls are simply a part of the auto industry. Tesla, which produces automobiles, is therefore bound to face its own series of recalls over the course of its doing business. What defines an auto company then, is not whether or not it experiences recalls, but how it handles them. Tesla, voluntarily recalling the vehicles, has made the right decision.<br /><br />Compare that to established automakers like Ford which produced the Pinto in the 1970s, knowing it had a potentially fatal fuel system flaw, but after cost-benefit analysis decided settling potential lawsuits (including those involving deaths) would be cheaper overall than a voluntary recall.<br /><br />It’s no mystery why deep-pocketed, well-established car manufacturers are often excused from the table when talk of recalls focus on younger car companies. Many of the former have deep ties to both political and media friends, extending to them benefit of the doubt they do not otherwise deserve.<br /><br />For Tesla, the unprecedented customer base that it is building is due in part to its commitment to a wider vision than annual profits. Producing electric vehicles and an entirely alternative paradigm to the current auto industry is something people can get behind, especially for a company committed enough to voluntarily recall its vehicles when reliability issues are uncovered.<br /><br />Should Tesla continue to adhere to that vision and a strict sense of ethics underpinning it, it will continue to weather relative setbacks common to the rest of the auto industry.</div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/04/putting-teslas-ev-car-recall-into.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-1323719298256450981Thu, 30 Mar 2017 05:46:00 +00002017-03-29T22:46:29.382-07:003DPrintingSciTechsolutionsMakerBot: Trying (in vain) to Centralize Decentralization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>March 30, 2017</b> (<a href="http://wishful-thinking.org/index.php/2017/03/28/makerbot-trying-in-vain-to-centralize-decentralization/">Wishful-Thinking</a>) - MakerBot is an American-based 3D printer company that gained prominence among the maker community with its originally opensource, consumer-friendly machines. Makerspaces, schools, institutions, and individuals around the world enthusiastically adopted MakerBot’s hardware and joined its online 3D model library, <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.<br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zpnKEUCeAY/WNog4f9Uf4I/AAAAAAAAPi4/wH4TaMW_Ox4tqQ_zt_3ztLx9c6ZoaANPwCLcB/s1600/Makerbot-cuts-staff-600x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zpnKEUCeAY/WNog4f9Uf4I/AAAAAAAAPi4/wH4TaMW_Ox4tqQ_zt_3ztLx9c6ZoaANPwCLcB/s640/Makerbot-cuts-staff-600x400.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>While MakerBot and the 3D printing industry it was a part of represented a paradigm shift in localizing manufacturing and liberating the masses from consumerism, the popularity MakerBot gained tempted its founders into a more traditional course of action; selling their company out to profit-driven investors who sought to turn the company into the “Apple of 3D printing.”<br /><br />In reality, there can be no “Apple of 3D printing.” There can be no centralized monopoly of 3D printing because 3D printing itself is a function of decentralization.<br /><br />3D printers are machines that can make virtually anything out of a wide and ever-growing variety of materials. For now, virtually anything you may buy made of plastic can be fabricated with 3D printing. In the future, everything including ceramics, glass, and even metal will be 3D printed as well with large, expensive machines already doing so, used by automotive, aerospace, and other heavy industrial companies.<br /><br />With a 3D printer, you have what is essentially a miniature factory on your tabletop. With 3D design software, you are able to create your own designs. With an internet connection, you have access to one of many online 3D model libraries, many of which offer models for downloading for free. With a 3D scanner, you can capture the physical characteristics of real world objects and print them.<br /><br />3D printing, thus represents the decentralization of manufacturing. 3D printers themselves are subject to their own disruptive nature, with printers being used to turn out the next generation of components for future 3D printer designs.<br /><br />In such an industry, the notion of monopolizing and dominating the market is irrational, and not just theoretically, but tangibly.<br /><br />Design-Engineering.com in a February 2017 article titled, “<a href="http://www.design-engineering.com/makerbot-restructuring-layoffs-1004025957/">Makerbot announces restructuring and layoffs</a>,” would report:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Makerbot’s new CEO Nadav Goshen announced a significant restructuring of the company in order to meet with growing challenges in the desktop 3D printing market.<br /><br />The Stratasys subsidiary will be cutting 30% of its workforce in an effort to reorganize the staff into small groups around specific product offerings.</i></blockquote>The announcement is only the most recent in a series of setbacks for the company. It has suffered similar “restructurings” in years past.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>MakerBot, which began as an opensource hardware and software company, quickly switched over to a proprietary business model, much like Apple. The move was highly unpopular among mainstream 3D printing enthusiasts, and many of MakerBot’s users now are schools and individuals with little to no experience in 3D printing who are attracted to the supposedly consumer-friendly, albeit expensive, user experience MakerBot users receive.<br /><br />In reality, virtually everything MakerBot does as a company and its printers do as personal manufacturing platforms can be done better by smaller niche 3D printing companies who, as an added bonus, use opensource software and hardware.<br /><br />Companies like the Netherlands-based Ultimaker have inspired start-ups around the world building machines based on Ultimaker’s opensource designs. While Ultimaker will never become the “Apple of 3D printing,” it has secured its place within the 3D printing community as a valuable cornerstone.<br /><br />The result of this opensource model is a distribution of wealth through localized entrepreneurship. There is no single “Apple” making billions off of 3D printing. Instead, there is a network of smaller companies filling niches and serving local communities, glued together by more prominent names and platforms globally.<br /><br />MakerBot attempts in vain to dominate and monopolize what is essentially an indomitable market and it is visibly suffering because of it.<br /><br />One can only hope that one of the “smaller groups” MakerBot has broken itself down into, considers its roots as an opensource hardware and software company which brought it to prominence in the first place; roots that when forsaken, began MakerBot’s slow and painful slide into the abyss.</div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/03/makerbot-trying-in-vain-to-centralize.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6341032756328392926Wed, 29 Mar 2017 06:32:00 +00002017-03-28T23:32:49.477-07:00SciTechAutomation Threatens Jobs But Offers Financial Freedom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>March 29, 2017</b> (<a href="http://wishful-thinking.org/index.php/2017/03/18/automation-threatens-jobs-but-offers-financial-freedom/">Wishful-Thinking</a>) - Despite sensational headlines and opportunistic politicking regarding the threat automation poses to socioeconomic stability, with a fully informed, properly educated population, more opportunities than threats lie ahead of us in the near future.<br /><br />Automation has since the Industrial Revolution replaced human jobs with machines. As technology advances and automation evolves, the socioeconomic landscape of human civilization has evolved with it.<br /><br />For instance, the initial Industrial Revolution disrupted centuries of multidisciplinary crafts and trades where cottage industry consisting of individuals or small groups of people carried out the entire process of production. As technology merges information with the physical world, processes like 3D design, personal manufacturing, business administration, marketing, and even logistics are beginning to merge again. <br /><br />So are fears that automation will displace human labor and disrupt socioeconomic stability warranted? Yes and no.<br /><br />In China, according to MIT Technology Review’s article, “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601215/china-is-building-a-robot-army-of-model-workers/">China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers</a>,” millions of workers face potential unemployment as factories replace thousands of jobs at a time as automation advances and robotics improve.<br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PUieVdUqQfo/WNohtKqKQ2I/AAAAAAAAPjA/hj7pY-RDCOQx9gNwq9dae-6b1Y1ieDolwCLcB/s1600/0_2070d4_1385c91a_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PUieVdUqQfo/WNohtKqKQ2I/AAAAAAAAPjA/hj7pY-RDCOQx9gNwq9dae-6b1Y1ieDolwCLcB/s640/0_2070d4_1385c91a_orig.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br />The article notes that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Millions of low-skilled migrant workers found employment in gigantic factories, producing an unimaginable range of products, from socks to servers.</i></blockquote>And in here lies the problem, a poorly educated, low-skilled workforce. For low-skilled workers, robots are indisputably a threat. Once they lose their job, finding employment elsewhere becomes a necessity. As these workers continue to move away from companies replacing human labor with automation, competition for remaining jobs suitable for low-skilled workers increases.<br /><br />To solve this problem, social, economic, and political elites have attempted to float the idea of a “universal basic income.” The Guardian in its article, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland">Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland</a>,” would report:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The concept of a universal basic income revolves around the idea of offering every individual, regardless of existing welfare benefits or earned income, a non-conditional flat-rate payment, with any income earned above that taxed progressively. The intention is to provide a basic economic platform on which people can build their lives, whether they choose to earn, learn, care or set up a business.</i></blockquote>However utopian or empathetic such a concept may seem, it essential seeks to place millions, if not billions of people under the control of highly centralized special interests, many of which will simultaneously monopolize all means of production. Such a scenario invites immense abuse with a population so hopelessly dependent on these centralized special interests, should abuse take place, little or nothing could keep it in check.<br /><br /><b>A Look at an Alternative Future</b><br /><br />However, real solutions to expanding automation and the jobs it threatens do exist, offering an alternative future.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>In addition to expanding automation and advancing robotics, another trend should be noted. As advanced manufacturing improves, the cost of automation decreases while utilizing it becomes more accessible. For a properly informed and educated population, automation then offers an opportunity to take highly centralized industries providing a handful of investors immense profits, and decentralize both the industries themselves and the profits made within them.<br /><br />Instead of the auto industry replacing all jobs with automation and providing unemployed, poorly educated workers with a universal basic income they will be hopelessly dependent for their lives and their children’s lives, properly educated workforces facing unemployment can simply utilize automation themselves to compete with and take a market share from auto monopolies.<br /><br />Such a scenario was described in a special report published by USA Today titled, “<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/02/06/special-report-automation-puts-jobs-peril/96464788/">Automation puts jobs in peril</a>.”<br /><br />It tells the tale of small companies and even individuals leveraging advanced automation technology to create their own businesses, sidestepping both inevitable unemployment working at larger firms and the servile dependence they would face sustaining themselves on a subsidized universal basic income. However, in order to do this, individuals must acquire the skills necessary to successfully adopt and apply automation.<br /><br />The report states:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Maxi Cifarelli, 25, of Baltimore, peers through safety goggles at a flat screen, her left knee bent and heel resting on her chair.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>Two years after earning a fine arts degree from Towson University with a specialty in interdisciplinary object design, she now spends her work days working with a personality-free machine with a name to match: a computer numerical control, or CNC, router.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>With automation poised to sweep through the economy, some fear that it will kill more jobs than it creates.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>But Cifarelli’s experience is the opposite. She befriended automation, instead of fighting it, and she has a job because of it.</i></blockquote><div>The report highlights industries under threat by robotics and artificial intelligence. Restaurant workers, journalists, bookkeepers, shelf-stockers all face unemployment. However, the means of automating these jobs could just as easily be adopted by individuals or small, local companies to make their own automated restaurants, news platforms, accounting firms, or logistical services.<br /><br />Instead of a population of laborers toiling under centralized special interests, there lies the possibility of a population of entrepreneurs maintaining a highly decentralized mesh of small businesses leveraging automation, information technology, and other innovations.<br /><br />But the same special interests floating the concept of a universal basic income are attempting to head this possibility off at the pass as well.<br /><br />Quartz in an article titled, “<a href="https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/">The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates</a>,” would report that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment.</i></blockquote>The article would also note that the money earned from the taxes would go to retraining unemployed laborers for other jobs, and “jobs” that likely exclude the utilization of automation for entrepreneurial enterprises. And like all other taxes, immense corporations heavily dependent on automation will inevitably find ways of influencing legislation and regulations to escape paying their fair share, meaning that those small and medium enterprises will be hit hardest. The consequence of this is an even faster acceleration toward highly centralized industry and a population dangerously dependent on subsidized incomes.<br /><br /><b>Shifting Our Thinking</b><br /><br />Avoiding this dystopian future requires a paradigm shift in current thinking. The employee-employer paradigm is dissolving before our eyes, and what ends up taking its place is entirely up to us.<br /><br />Makerspaces, hackerspaces, design studios and small companies leveraging automation that provide internships all offer a starting point for establishing a wider effort to prepare the population to be liberated by decentralized automation rather than shackled by centralized automation and universal basic incomes.<br /><br />Seeing through utopian talking points, and grasping the true implications of concepts like universal basic income and taxing robots is important in developing policy and paradigms that serve the majority’s best interests rather than the small handful of special interests attempting to move their own agenda forward.<br /><br />Ultimately, self-interest will drive unfolding events. If special interests are able to efficiently implement the centralization of automation, prevent competition through robotic taxes targeting small and medium businesses, and create a population dependent on these interests through subsidized income schemes, it is likely a dystopia will emerge. <br /><br />Should these schemes be exposed, their implementation delayed, hampered, or otherwise disrupted, self-interest across populations seeking socioeconomic security may begin shifting away from employee-employer paradigms and toward a future of decentralized, balanced entrepreneurship. </div></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/03/automation-threatens-jobs-but-offers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-3120045731758025487Tue, 28 Mar 2017 08:28:00 +00002017-03-28T01:29:41.627-07:00agriculturesolutionsUsing Organic Agriculture to Change Your Community (and the World) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>March 28, 2017</b> (The Vin Armani Show) - Curtis Stone is a farmer, author, speaker and consultant. His area of expertise is in quick growing, high value annual vegetables for direct consumer market streams. His book, The Urban Farmer demonstrates organic intensive techniques with a focus on business and systems to streamline labour and production. He offers a new way to think about farming. One where quality of life and profitability coexist.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HPIxEkkoe2g?start=3780" width="560"></iframe></div><br />Read more about Curtis Stone at&nbsp;<a href="http://theurbanfarmer.co/">http://theurbanfarmer.co/</a>.</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/03/using-organic-agriculture-to-change.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-937458968786188290Sun, 29 Jan 2017 10:31:00 +00002017-01-29T02:31:16.517-08:00alternative economyeconomicsfintechWhat's Really Behind the Rise of the Cashless Economy? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 29, 2017</b> (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Geopolitical analyst, journalist, and activist James Corbett of the <a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/">Corbett Report</a> steps viewers through the real story behind India's recent, massive demonetization efforts - the story untold by prominent news agencies - and untold for a very good reason.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mA3Nt5bLrFs" width="560"></iframe></div><br />Corbett reveals the US develop agency <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/india/press-releases/oct-14-2016-usaid-launches-catalyst-drive-cashless-payments-india">USAID's role in preparing India for its demonetization campaign</a>, as well as the special interests both within and beyond India's borders driving the efforts. <br /><br />India's financial and economic shake up is a warning shot for the world - that the battle of financial technology to either liberate us all through decentralized peer-to-peer blockchain currencies, or render us under a centralized, global financial control grid ruled by a small circle of corporate-financier special interests is coming to a head.<br /><br />For those to whom cryptocurrencies like BitCoin is a hobby, what has just transpired in India may provide the impetus to expand efforts to perfect and proliferate blockchain technology before cashless payment systems take over and displace all forms of currency, old and new.<br /><br />For those who have yet to dig into cryptocurrencies or the details behind the emerging cashless global economy, Corbett's latest video is the perfect springboard into both.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;</span></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/whats-really-behind-rise-of-cashless.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6575881815094256729Tue, 17 Jan 2017 08:52:00 +00002017-01-17T00:52:16.668-08:00InfrastructureLocalWelfareAgorist Challenge: Fixing Flint Michigan's Poisoned Water<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 17, 2017 </b>(Tony Cartlaucci - LocalOrg) - Did you know nearly 100,000 people in Flint Michigan <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flint-water-crisis-continues_us_587c7f05e4b0b3c7a7b2026a">are still drinking poisoned water</a>?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nOK7YE7uKII/WH3aBxIqccI/AAAAAAAAPLs/a0zOcpnlVwYDtqjQeLllqpook53oINFLgCLcB/s1600/587c878a1200002d00ad7c39.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nOK7YE7uKII/WH3aBxIqccI/AAAAAAAAPLs/a0zOcpnlVwYDtqjQeLllqpook53oINFLgCLcB/s640/587c878a1200002d00ad7c39.jpeg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />That should be no surprise. The government and institutions charged and trusted to ensure the residents of this Michigan city had safe drinking water already demonstrated criminal levels of negligence and corruption, causing the problem to begin with. Expecting these same people and the system they represent to solve the problem lingers somewhere between the unreasonable and the absurd.<br /><br />US President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint over a year ago - meaning that the problem isn't just corrupt, negligent, and criminal politicians in Flint - but that the incompetence and impotence goes all the way to Washington.<br /><br />A year on and the "solutions" presented have ranged from simply forcing residents to buy bottled water and unsustainable charity providing those bottles, to superficial, even deceptive measures like replacing home faucets instead of the miles of poisoned plumbing running through the city.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vA0TAfnn5Dg/WH3VDuFPYsI/AAAAAAAAPLE/IkEOQj-PQnYBCWvyBloeax8g7M-qDgtmQCLcB/s1600/160901165621-flint-water-fountain-exlarge-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vA0TAfnn5Dg/WH3VDuFPYsI/AAAAAAAAPLE/IkEOQj-PQnYBCWvyBloeax8g7M-qDgtmQCLcB/s640/160901165621-flint-water-fountain-exlarge-169.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />As for actually fixing Flint's plumbing, government estimates range from "millions" to "billions" indicating no serious thought has been given to even so much as planning an infrastructure overhaul.<br /><br />It is most certainly a showcase for the absolute failure of government. But could it be a showcase for something more positive?<br /><br /><b>A Showcase For Alternatives&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Anarchists and agorists propose that there is virtually no problem that cannot be solved through the market - voluntary exchanges between free citizens contributing to a better future. The few, semi-permanent solutions that have presented themselves in Flint have certainly leaned more toward this direction.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Atmospheric water generator (AWG) company, EcoloBlue, <a href="http://www.abc12.com/home/headlines/First-wave-of-Ecoloblue-water-generators-setup-in-Flint-homes-392079821.html">donated 250 of their machines to the residents of Flint</a>. However, at 1,200 dollars a piece, and requiring proprietary filtration systems, it is hardly the right fit for this particular market. &nbsp;<a href="https://www.benzinga.com/news/16/06/8119620/ecoloblue-proposes-big-solution-for-flint-atmospheric-water-generators">Beyond charity or a large government subsidy</a>, these machines will not reach many more people.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pVqWrCJlaX8" width="560"></iframe></div><br />However, AWGs produce water in precisely the same way a conventional dehumidifier does. It cools down a condenser so that moisture in the air condenses on it, then falls into a collection basin below. AWGs however include an additional filtration stage and a dispensing system. They also feature food-grade materials across all of their surfaces which conventional dehumidifiers may not.<br /><br />The EcoloBlue units also include features that may not be as necessary and have helped contribute to their relatively steep price. These include hot and cold water dispensing capabilities and a computerized touch-screen monitoring and control system.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H6amixGdaRk/WH3VyMLnIDI/AAAAAAAAPLM/1pdzO-D1T0cscc5d0aF9mc2_aPoIiGXZACLcB/s1600/Atmospheric_Water_Generator_diagram.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H6amixGdaRk/WH3VyMLnIDI/AAAAAAAAPLM/1pdzO-D1T0cscc5d0aF9mc2_aPoIiGXZACLcB/s400/Atmospheric_Water_Generator_diagram.svg.png" width="400" /></a></div>Creating a barebones design that both fits the market in Flint and provides reliable, decentralized, and most importantly clean water production for people, should not be a difficult challenge to meet for local entrepreneurs, innovators, and makers - or even EcoloBlue itself.<br /><br />An opensource design, based on a simple dehumidifier with stainless steel condensers and a widely available, generic water filtration system could easily be developed and fabricated in virtually any machine shop or makerspace in the state. While the costs will need to be low, the market for efficient, simple, and opensource water generators may make up in volume what is lost in big-ticket sales. Small businesses that form around this project could branch out, building a line of products to target different markets and price ranges over time.<br /><br />Larger units operated by business owners and community centers like churches and clubs, could bottle and dispense/deliver clean water to residents as a stop gap. There is a potential to create water-independence in Flint like some communities have created for food and energy elsewhere.<br /><br />It is the prefect project for technologically informed anarchists and agorists to prove their principles in practice, facing and overcoming a challenge government has demonstrably failed to meet. It is also a perfect opportunity to gain a foothold in the area of water independence, a crucial but often overlooked aspect of moving from centralization to localization.<br /><br /><b>Fighting a Forgotten Battle&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HwmZcahkhcQ/WH3WYioTw1I/AAAAAAAAPLY/yvveFB4IYSEnA-T-blX7_2BHjVu6T07kwCLcB/s1600/dewpointe1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HwmZcahkhcQ/WH3WYioTw1I/AAAAAAAAPLY/yvveFB4IYSEnA-T-blX7_2BHjVu6T07kwCLcB/s400/dewpointe1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Michigan-based Libertarian politician <a href="https://beinglibertarian.com/meet-tiffany-hayden-lp-congressional-candidate-detroit/">Tiffany Hayden</a> has spent a large amount of time attempting to draw attention to the Flint water crisis - with many people believing - thanks to the corporate media - that the crisis is long over.<br /><br />She has also attempted to approach local charity organizations, lobby the government, and stir up public support for action - any action - to address the crisis.<br /><br />She laments that even residents who are literally drinking poisoned water, have been lulled into apathy by handouts, superficial remedies, and an overall lack of awareness and leadership. Because lead poisoning is gradual, residents do not make an instinctive link between the poisoned water they are drinking and the problems it is causing in terms of health - both mental and physical.<br /><br />While proponents of anarchy and agorism tell Hayden that asking the government to solve a problem of the government's own creation is futile - making a valid point - and "free market" solutions are the alternative - no tangible solutions have actually been proposed, let alone implemented.<br /><br />Solving the Flint water crisis, however, would go far in validating anarchy and agorism as no longer ideologies, but an actual tool set used to solve real world problems when politics and politicians inevitably fail.<br /><br />The problem facing free-market proponents attempting to prove their principles work better in practice than the existing system, is how to approach and "sell" clean, opensource, decentralized water independence to the people of Flint and beyond.<br /><br />And if charity or crowdfunding is employed during the Flint water crisis, it should be focused on permanent solutions that provide permanent water independence - not bottles of water that are literally here today and gone tomorrow and benefiting only corporations like Nestle, Pepsi, and Coke instead of local businesses.<br /><br /><b>Inspiration</b><br /><br />Elon Musk has dedicated himself to two apparent goals - making humanity a multiplanetary species, and creating solar-electric infrastructure. His electric car company, Tesla Motors, approached enthusiastic people first, then with successive models, he made his cars both more appealing to regular people and more accessible.<br /><br />Throughout the growth of all of his businesses, he carefully balanced market realities against his own ideals. In other words, ideals that ignore market realities will remain intangible ideals. And pursuing market realities without ideals becomes aimless and unsustainable. He has stated that he believes nearly all problems can be solved in the markets.<br /><br />Luckily for those attempting to move into water independence, the technological hurdles are not quite as steep as launching rockets into space or designing and manufacturing thousands of electric cars. And because Flint is already undergoing a long-term water crisis, those making machines to address the crisis can likely find labs at local universities to help test the water their machines produce to ensure it is not only safer than Flint's poisoned water, but safer than anything available, even in a bottle.<br /><br /><b>Resources</b><br /><br />Below is a list of makerspaces in Michigan that likely have the tools and talent, and perhaps even the business acumen to approach and overcome this crisis. Solving it will not only provide them with viable small businesses, but will also highlight for a wider audience the growing role in their community their makerspaces play as important local institutions.<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>GR Makers: (Grand Rapids)<a href="https://www.grmakers.com/"> https://www.grmakers.com/</a></li><li>Geek Group: (Grand Rapids)&nbsp;<a href="http://thegeekgroup.org/">http://thegeekgroup.org/</a></li><li>Steamworks: (Flint)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.flintsteamworks.org/">http://www.flintsteamworks.org/</a></li><li>Jackson Makerspace: (Jackson)&nbsp;<a href="http://jacksonmakerspace.org/wp/">http://jacksonmakerspace.org/wp/</a></li><li>i3Detroit: (Detroit)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.i3detroit.org/">https://www.i3detroit.org/</a></li><li>Omni Corps Detroit: (Detroit)&nbsp;<a href="https://omnicorpdetroit.com/blog/">https://omnicorpdetroit.com/blog/</a></li><li>Maker Works: (Ann Arbor)&nbsp;<a href="http://maker-works.com/">http://maker-works.com/</a></li><li>All Hands Active: (Ann Arbor)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.allhandsactive.org/">http://www.allhandsactive.org/</a></li><li>Tech Shop: (Detroit)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.techshop.ws/ts_detroit.html">http://www.techshop.ws/ts_detroit.html</a></li><li>Lancing Makers Network: (Lancing)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lansingmakersnetwork.org/">https://www.lansingmakersnetwork.org/</a></li></ul><div>An introduction to atmospheric water generators via Wikipedia:&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_water_generator">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_water_generator</a><br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;</span></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/agorist-challenge-fixing-flint.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-8131786676030149680Mon, 16 Jan 2017 06:01:00 +00002017-01-15T22:01:43.749-08:00infowarpropagandaSciTechFake News: The Latest Weapon in Information Space <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 16, 2017</b>&nbsp;(<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2017/01/16/fake-news-the-latest-weapon-in-information-space/">Tony Cartalucci - NEO</a>) - The ability for technology and innovations to transform global economics and geopolitics is often underestimated, even sidelined in retrospect.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GjoZfwA-PZs/WGdwk5xbKvI/AAAAAAAAPEU/iTg36JdtFH8uTL0Wn4q5-ewapA_qu7USgCLcB/s1600/facebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GjoZfwA-PZs/WGdwk5xbKvI/AAAAAAAAPEU/iTg36JdtFH8uTL0Wn4q5-ewapA_qu7USgCLcB/s640/facebook.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />However, from the technological achievements that gave the British Empire mastery over the seas, to the industrial revolution that eventually disrupted and unraveled the empire's carefully constructed global system of mercantilism, the march of technological progress literally governors the rise and fall of global centers of power and the empires built around them.<br /><br /><b>Disruptive Information Technology</b><br /><br />With the advent of information technology (IT), what once required immense capital and a substantial workforce to disseminate information across large segments of the population can now be done by a single individual for virtually no cost at all.<br /><br />It is no longer necessarily the amount of resources one has at their disposal, but rather the power of their ideas and words that determine the efficacy of their message and the impact it has on society.<br /><br />IT has leveled the playing field. The United States and Europe for decades, monopolized the flow of information across various forms of media. During World War II, the Allies easily outsmarted Axis powers and their less sophisticated, clumsy propaganda efforts. Between World War II and the Cold War, the US and British ruling circles not only held uncontested influence over their own populations, but through Voice of America and the BBC, they were able to project that influence abroad.<br /><br />The cost of opening a radio station, a television studio, or a printing press to produce newspapers was prohibitive for the vast majority of people who may have disagreed with the "consensus" created by those who had the resources to produce mass media.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZW9V2sALJdE/WGdwxEd2vRI/AAAAAAAAPEY/UdqGWFF_eRkOGSPhbHhf32piekE8LpZiwCLcB/s1600/uncle-sam-400x2971.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZW9V2sALJdE/WGdwxEd2vRI/AAAAAAAAPEY/UdqGWFF_eRkOGSPhbHhf32piekE8LpZiwCLcB/s400/uncle-sam-400x2971.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>However today, not only does IT allow states once targeted by Western propaganda to better protect political and economic stability within their borders, they are able to get their side of the story out to Western audiences.<br /><br />Beyond that, independent activists, journalists, and analysts can now write and speak before audiences of millions, contesting "mainstream" narratives promoted by circles of political and economic power worldwide.<br /><br />The effects of this are evident everywhere we look.<br /><br />The "alternative media," has already significantly disrupted manufactured "consensus" across a wide variety of interests from big-agriculture and big-pharmaceuticals, to agendas surrounding geopolitical conflicts everywhere from Ukraine to Syria.<br /><br /><b></b><br /><a name='more'></a><b>Re-centralizing and Reasserting Control&nbsp;</b><br /><br /><br />Independent news, analysis, and activist networks have flourished on the Internet, primarily through blogs, websites, and video channels. However, special interests have invested much in reasserting control over narratives and information in general by re-centralizing media platforms.<br /><br />This is being done in particular with social media, and especially Facebook. Facebook boasts nearly 1.8 billion users. Virtually every person one passes on the streets using their mobile device, is using Facebook to connect with their friends and to access news and information. Facebook's popularity has all but centralized the majority of online users' activities, thus reasserting control over information has begun here.<br /><br />Facebook has used many different pretexts to roll out this system of control. In 2014, it claimed that it was changing the way it displays posts in user news feeds&nbsp;<a href="http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2014/09/facebooks-soft-censorship.html">because</a>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.</i></blockquote>However, it is not the user that determines what is most relevant to them, but rather an algorithm created by Facebook. In reality, the change meant that those disseminating information through Facebook and reaching large numbers of people now suddenly found their reach significantly shortened. To reach people that have already consciously decided to follow certain users, it is now necessary to pay Facebook money to "promote" posts.<br /><br />In essence, the very obstacles of capital in relation to public reach dismantled by the advent of IT, have been reintroduced through Facebook's monopoly over social media.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tjKsT_aySSw/WGdxGxT_WrI/AAAAAAAAPEg/1IOzS1m50LgL8MDwvkqUU_SBJuS3YKRGACLcB/s1600/Fake-News-Key-Board-Computer-900-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tjKsT_aySSw/WGdxGxT_WrI/AAAAAAAAPEg/1IOzS1m50LgL8MDwvkqUU_SBJuS3YKRGACLcB/s640/Fake-News-Key-Board-Computer-900-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />In 2016, Facebook would tighten the screws further - this time under the pretext of combating "fake news." "Fake news" is a term created by the very monopolies slowly diminishing in the face of expanding and ever sophisticated alternative media.<br /><br />While hysteria is being created by linking "fake news" with "Russian propaganda" and "white nationalists," in reality the measures being put in place to "fact check" and subsequently censor information deemed "fake news" will target everything that contradicts narratives promoted by US and European special interests - everything from promoting wars, to promoting and expanding big-business.<br /><br /><b>Time For Another Disruption&nbsp;</b><br /><br />In any struggle, adaptation is required. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms joining the so-called war on "fake news," those who seek to maintain the rise of the alternative media and a balance of power across information space must identify the special interests driving this agenda, as well as various means to undermine and overcome it.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HFEcpn8whoI/WGdxRKO3vpI/AAAAAAAAPEk/0qQS6IK6eQ8rlckmvGuY5pAN3T6dg6uCQCLcB/s1600/VK.com-logo.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HFEcpn8whoI/WGdxRKO3vpI/AAAAAAAAPEk/0qQS6IK6eQ8rlckmvGuY5pAN3T6dg6uCQCLcB/s200/VK.com-logo.svg.png" width="200" /></a></div>Russia, for example, has VKontakte (VK), which competes with Facebook and is widely popular across Russia. It diminishes Facebook's monopoly over social media and gives Russia the ability to control social media within its borders. VK is also a profitable company.<br /><br />China, likewise, has its own domestic tech-giants that allow it to control media within its borders and among its population.<br /><br />This creates a balance of power between nations within information space. To create a balance of power within nations, there are other alternatives.<br /><br />Just like cryptocurrencies are disrupting traditional financial institutions and the control they exercise over global monetary systems, peer-to-peer (P2P) social media platforms may help solve the problem of monopolies like Facebook exercising control over the information we receive - or don't receive.<br /><br /><a href="https://freenetproject.org/">Alternatives like FreeNet</a>&nbsp;are not centrally controlled. Users download a free program onto their computer and it connects them directly with others using FreeNet around the world. There is no centralized administrator. Rather than a hub to which all users connect like Facebook - P2P networks resemble a mesh in which everyone serves as a node.<br /><br />Users are anonymous if they wish to be, and content cannot be controlled or censored, nor can access to information be throttled back as Facebook's news feed algorithms do.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gEd0Q4xuP1I/WGdxdbB8uuI/AAAAAAAAPEs/YqJNn6twQpkQAiCaKRCPLSelRTs_7nfCACLcB/s1600/p2p-network-vs-server.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gEd0Q4xuP1I/WGdxdbB8uuI/AAAAAAAAPEs/YqJNn6twQpkQAiCaKRCPLSelRTs_7nfCACLcB/s640/p2p-network-vs-server.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Enterprising states or individuals dedicated to establishing a balance of power across information space could make and promote their own P2P social media platforms. While they are not capable of being controlled like Facebook, VK, or China's centralized alternatives, they still help undermine foreign control - and in the long-term, help states adjust to technological decentralization that will inevitably unfold regardless.<br /><br />While money will not be made in the same way as Facebook's founders are profiting from their control over social media, another form of profit results for the individuals or states that create such a platform.<br /><br />Geopolitically, a successful, widely used, and disruptive P2P social networking platform that undermines or entirely breaks Facebook's control over social media evens the playing field and allows individuals and states to once again get their side of the story out to the public on equal footing to the "fact checkers" seeking to combat "fake news" on Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized platforms dominated by Western tech-giants.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zpnN99LHJBM/WGdxqXExEWI/AAAAAAAAPE0/-qVCS8xiYR0JLe79o_tsthdmD4Bayr1hgCLcB/s1600/2011_Egyptian_protests_Facebook_%2526_jan25_card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="454" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zpnN99LHJBM/WGdxqXExEWI/AAAAAAAAPE0/-qVCS8xiYR0JLe79o_tsthdmD4Bayr1hgCLcB/s640/2011_Egyptian_protests_Facebook_%2526_jan25_card.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />P2P will not make billions in profits for its creators, but it could help avert a war, disrupt a foreign monopoly from undermining and destroying a nation's economy, or allow a socioeconomic alternative to take root and flourish that otherwise would be hindered by the West's attempts to reassert control over information space and eliminate competition both politically and economically.<br /><br />When we think of things like social media, we may not immediately link it to the profound impact it has on geopolitics, economics, and the rise and fall of nation states and even regions of the world. But if Facebook's role in the 2011 US-engineered "Arab Spring" serves as any kind of example or warning, it is that uncontested domination over information space can literally destroy not just an entire nation, but an entire region of the planet.<br /><br />Creating alternatives to Facebook, then, is as essential to a state or individual's security as any traditional weapon system. To face the modern age without such alternatives is to take the battlefield unarmed, unprotected, and entirely unprepared.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/" style="color: #6fa8dc; text-decoration: none;">“</a><a href="http://journal-neo.org/" style="color: #6fa8dc; text-decoration: none;">New Eastern Outlook”</a>.</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , &quot;freesans&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , &quot;freesans&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21.56px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;tahoma&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , &quot;freesans&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px;">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/fake-news-latest-weapon-in-information.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-630135674176181711Sat, 14 Jan 2017 05:16:00 +00002017-01-13T21:16:04.684-08:00EnergySciTechThe Truth About Elon Musk’s "Corporate Welfare"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 14, 2017</b> (Vin Armani - Activist Post)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8r8XyMIwytQ" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Vin Armani is the host of&nbsp;<a href="http://vinarmani.com/show" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">The Vin Armani Show</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.activistpost.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">Activist Post</a>, TV Star of Gigolos on Showtime and Agorist Entrepreneur. Follow&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/vinarmani" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">Vin on Twitter</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/VinArmani" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">subscribe on YouTube</a>. Get the weekly podcast on&nbsp;<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-vin-armani-show/id1176246726?mt=2" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">iTunes</a>&nbsp;or<a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/activist-post/vin-armani-show?refid=stpr" style="border: 0px; color: #005a8c; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.5s; vertical-align: baseline;">Stitcher</a>.</span></em></div></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-truth-about-elon-musks-corporate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-1482224268273088658Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:13:00 +00002017-01-11T09:13:21.382-08:00HealthGeneticsSciTechThe Cure for Everything and Why Things Are Different This Time <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 11, 2017</b> (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - The years between 2010 and 2020 may likely be remembered as the decade of gene therapy, and perhaps, the end of cancer, heart disease, blindness, deafness, and even aging - if this revolutionary technology is properly implemented and integrated into our healthcare infrastructure. But it will not happen without effort, or even without a fight - for gene therapy threatens to undermine and overturn some of the largest and most influential corporate monopolies on Earth.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LoumLT2GX4g/WHZgrYfRHzI/AAAAAAAAPHo/WKmpSM5ouYI_Ir5fIpx968bdMgCBgDLXwCLcB/s1600/dna_diagram_450x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LoumLT2GX4g/WHZgrYfRHzI/AAAAAAAAPHo/WKmpSM5ouYI_Ir5fIpx968bdMgCBgDLXwCLcB/s640/dna_diagram_450x300.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><b>Gene Therapy is Already a Working "Miracle Cure" &nbsp;</b><br /><br />In 2012, at the age of six years old, Emily Whitehead was enrolled in a phase I clinical trial at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to treat her acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). She had failed to respond to all other treatments.<br /><br />The clinical trial involved removing and genetically regineering her immune system's T-cells. Using viruses as a vector to insert new DNA into her T-cells, they were now able to recognize and destroy the cancer that was killing her. The cells were reintroduced to Emily's body intravenously, where they both fought the cancer, and replicated themselves just as all human cells do - with the difference being that the corrected DNA was replicated along with them.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Over time, the probability of ending up in the hospital nears 100%. When you finally get there, do you want to be greeted with a single injection cure and a new lease on life? Or an over-priced regiment of poison that will strip you of every dollar you have, your human dignity, and eventually your life?</i></span></blockquote>Years later, Emily Whitehead is still cancer free. She went from literally lying on what would have been her death bed, to going into durable remission for years. The production of Emily's specialized T-cells cost 15,000 USD - or a fraction of what pharmaceutical corporations charge per year for medications that don't even cure cancer.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WcnzetT4ezY?start=450" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />The 15,000 USD price tag was for what at the time was a highly experimental, customized clinical trial. With effort, the price can be reduced further. The research and trial was funded not by pharmaceutical corporations or even the US government, but by charity - the Leukemia &amp; Lymphoma Society. <br /><br />Emily Whitehead isn't the only patient to survive otherwise incurable cancer thanks to gene therapy. By 2014, over 60 other patients were successfully given the same treatment. And while other cancers involve tumors of a different nature, scientists, including those involved in Emily Whitehead's survival, believe that similar techniques could be used to eradicate them just as effectively.<br /><br />Research into everything from lung cancer to brain cancer is ongoing.<br /><br /><b></b><br /><a name='more'></a><b>There's a Catch... &nbsp;</b><br /><br />Aside from permanently curing cancer, gene therapy is being investigated as a means of permanently curing diabetes, hemophilia, and other diseases in which cells are missing vital instructions required for normal biological function. The regeneration of aging heart tissue is also being investigated, as is the process of stopping - or even reversing - biological aging altogether.<br /><br />While the gene therapy that saved Emily Whitehead's life is not an approved treatment yet, there are others that have been approved for use in China, the EU, and soon-to-be approved by the US FDA.<br /><br />However, there is a catch.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3BmwZIsqTuM/WHZl1KF1ssI/AAAAAAAAPH4/KIPLJ3nF_SM9yzW5Lo99Vow0gHoxU2T-ACLcB/s1600/screen_shot_2012-07-24_at_10.10.37.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3BmwZIsqTuM/WHZl1KF1ssI/AAAAAAAAPH4/KIPLJ3nF_SM9yzW5Lo99Vow0gHoxU2T-ACLcB/s320/screen_shot_2012-07-24_at_10.10.37.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Because gene therapy cures individuals by correcting a fundamental genetic factor that will continuously replicate itself after being corrected, most gene therapy treatments involve a single, inexpensive shot resulting in a lifetime of healthy biological function.<br /><br />In other words, instead of treating diabetes with insulin injections everyday, providing corporations with a lifetime income based on selling insulin and the kits used to administer it, a single shot that in the future may cost only hundreds of dollars, perhaps even less, to fabricate and administer, will leave patients permanently cured at a genetic level and profiteering pharmaceutical monopolies virtually extinct.<br /><br />That is why, despite the vast majority of the funding behind EU-approved gene therapies coming from public funding, the pharmaceutical corporations currently selling the handful of available gene therapies today have placed price tags on them for an absurd 1 million euros - not because they cost 1 million euros to produce and distribute, but to cover the lost income selling ineffective pharmaceuticals had provided these corporations in past years to "treat" now entirely curable conditions.<br /><br />Tech magazines, the Western media, and even "scientific journals" have attempted to defend this practice - but are only able to do so as long as the public remains ignorant to both the realities of gene therapy today, and the implications it has to positively transform human healthcare tomorrow. <br /><br /><b>Here's Where It Gets Interesting &nbsp;</b><br /><br />Gene therapy can be carried out in a properly equipped university lab. Manufacturing technology, including personal manufacturing tech like 3D printing, CNC machining, laser cutters, and PCB design suites are making customized and cheaper medical and experimental equipment more accessible to a larger number of people.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VkfucZ3PnB4/WHZl93rLthI/AAAAAAAAPH8/adY6YXA0o4U-vJgWLCzK75SO4uk9zQRGQCLcB/s1600/gt2BrianHanley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VkfucZ3PnB4/WHZl93rLthI/AAAAAAAAPH8/adY6YXA0o4U-vJgWLCzK75SO4uk9zQRGQCLcB/s400/gt2BrianHanley.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Opensource research and software used to study and manipulate genes and design vectors like those that delivered new genetic material to Emily Whitehead's T-cells are also a growing trend in the biotechnology community.<br /><br />While it is not necessarily inevitable that individuals or a state will take advantage of these trends to disrupt and overturn current human healthcare paradigms anytime soon, it is currently very possible. Examples of researchers circumventing the very measures corporations and Western governments have placed in the way of such paradigm shifts are already unfolding. <br /><br />MIT Tech Review has also covered self-funded self-experimentation using gene therapy. <br /><br />In October 2015, MIT Tech Review's article, "<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542371/a-tale-of-do-it-yourself-gene-therapy/">A Tale of Do-It-Yourself Gene Therapy</a>," would report:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Can aging be slowed by using gene therapy to make permanent changes to a person’s DNA?&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>One Seattle-area woman says she has tried exactly that. Her claim has entangled some high-profile American academics in a strange tale of do-it-yourself medicine that involves plane flights to Latin America, an L.A. film crew, and what’s purported to be the first attempt to use gene therapy to forestall normal aging.</i></blockquote>More recently, the same magazine, in a January 2017 article titled, "<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603217/one-mans-quest-to-hack-his-own-genes/">One Man’s Quest to Hack His Own Genes</a>," reported:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>At Hanley’s request, a doctor had injected into his thighs copies of a gene that Hanley, a PhD microbiologist, had designed and ordered from a research supply company. Then, plunging two pointed electrodes into his leg, the doctor had passed a strong current into his body, causing his muscle cells to open and absorb the new DNA.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>The effort is the second case MIT Technology Review has documented of unregulated gene therapy, a risky undertaking that is being embraced by a few daring individuals seeking to develop anti-aging treatments. The gene Hanley added to his muscle cells would make his body produce more of a potent hormone—potentially increasing his strength, stamina, and life span.</i></blockquote>Both articles provide insight into the growing "underground" world of DIY gene therapy - a movement that if cultivated properly, could relieve immense human suffering worldwide and shift the very nature of human healthcare to a reality where states don't go bankrupt treating their populations because populations can afford to treat themselves with effective, nearly free gene therapy technology.<br /><br /><b>Wanted: A Biotech Company Placing Purpose Before Profit&nbsp;</b><br /><br />At one point in MIT's article about Brian Hanley's DIY gene therapy experiment, the author remarked:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>In many conversations and e-mails with Hanley, I frequently wondered what his deepest motive was, and whether he even knew it himself. Was it to “develop products people will love,” as he told me, as if he were the Steve Jobs of plasmids?</i></blockquote>But what if Hanley, or someone like him doesn't want to become the proprietary-obsessed, profiteering Steve Jobs of plasmids, and instead wants to become the purpose-driven Elon Musk of gene therapy?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ppjzwrzr_Ow/WHZmQpxaeLI/AAAAAAAAPIA/-J5Tkhc7Y3syXhNWQZu9cWSgfmMb2N6UQCLcB/s1600/musk-car.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ppjzwrzr_Ow/WHZmQpxaeLI/AAAAAAAAPIA/-J5Tkhc7Y3syXhNWQZu9cWSgfmMb2N6UQCLcB/s640/musk-car.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Elon Musk, who heads aerospace company SpaceX and electric car and solar power combine Tesla-SolarCity, has been criticized for his prioritizing of purpose over profit. While Musk requires profits for his companies to be successful, for his employees to remain employed, and for capital to be available for future R&amp;D, it appears he and his shareholders see the long-term purpose and prospects of both companies as more important than short-term profits.<br /><br />What if someone possessing a similar mentality waded into gene therapy - seeing the potential to maximize a purpose-driven return on investment that benefited humanity in a historically unprecedented way instead of joining existing pharmaceutical monopolies in their profit-obsessed vision of holding cures over patient's heads for villain sums of "1 million euros?"<br /><br />Elon Musk is not and may never be a leader among the Fortune 500 - but he doesn't need to be. His popularity and the impact he has on society already ensures his place in human history where others with net-worths many times his could never achieve, and could never buy.<br /><br />He, she, or they who unleash gene therapy with purpose rather than for profit will likewise reap wealth immeasurable in dollars and cents.<br /><br /><b>What Can I Do?&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Until then, realize that everyday ordinary people can become directly involved in opening up gene therapy and the implications it holds for human healthcare starting today.<br /><br />Everything from simply educating and informing others of &nbsp;the basic concepts behind gene therapy and recent breakthroughs, to working with local community labs to expand their capabilities, resources, and ambitions, to developing opensource software and hardware researchers could use to advance human knowledge of how gene therapy works, are within the reach of writers, tech enthusiasts, designers, and engineers.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sndgVRwrKUg/WHZmklymMsI/AAAAAAAAPIE/nnFh6iNAJ0ce2elolkaXLcc1gtNQIs1CQCLcB/s1600/mit-comic2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sndgVRwrKUg/WHZmklymMsI/AAAAAAAAPIE/nnFh6iNAJ0ce2elolkaXLcc1gtNQIs1CQCLcB/s640/mit-comic2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Finding and supporting organizations like Leukemia &amp; Lymphoma Society who make resources available to researchers is also something anyone, regardless of background, can do.<br /><br />Over time, the probability of ending up in the hospital nears 100%. When you finally get there, do you want to be greeted with a single injection cure and a new lease on life? Or an over-priced regiment of poison that will strip you of every dollar you have, your human dignity, and eventually your life?<br /><br />When we're faced with that decision, it is already too late. Now is the time to get involved, even causally, even for a few hours a week, or even per month in raising awareness and shifting the current, unacceptable human healthcare paradigm.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i>&nbsp;</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-cure-for-everything-and-why-things.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-3302524954797303084Wed, 30 Nov 2016 06:45:00 +00002016-11-29T22:45:59.455-08:00AIITmachineLearningSciTechThe Imperative to Democratize Artificial Intelligence <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>November 30, 2016</b> (LocalOrg) - MIT Technology Review recently published an article titled, "<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602958/an-ai-ophthalmologist-shows-how-machine-learning-may-transform-medicine/?utm_campaign=socialflow&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=post">An AI Ophthalmologist Shows How Machine Learning May Transform Medicine</a>." In it, it describes how Google researchers at their DeepMind subsidiary used artificial intelligence (AI) to scan images of human eyes to detect a common form of blindness as well as, or better than trained experts can.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IN4RIElT87o/WD5zXHpxlJI/AAAAAAAAO4Y/uZb48Z_uyVsNgE1ujrFgVGzaz-phM2H0ACLcB/s1600/deepmind-head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IN4RIElT87o/WD5zXHpxlJI/AAAAAAAAO4Y/uZb48Z_uyVsNgE1ujrFgVGzaz-phM2H0ACLcB/s640/deepmind-head.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />They achieved this by using the same machine learning techniques Google and other tech giants including Facebook use to analyze images that show up on their web platforms. Instead of creating complex programs to handle every conceivable detail in an image, researchers instead teach machines how to learn on their own when exposed to large volumes of pre-tagged examples.<br /><br />In the MIT Technology Review article, DeepMind's algorithm studied some 128,000 retinal images that were already classified by ophthalmologists.<br /><br />The breakthrough is only the latest in a long line of advances in AI. AI machine learning is already being widely used in real-world applications, including sifting through the United Kingdom's National Health Service's records, automatically tagging - and flagging - images, videos, and voice across vast social networks, improving efficiency at utility plants by spotting trends and automatically adjusting power consumption, inputs, and outputs, as well as developing protocols for both pharmaceutical production and genetic engineering.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nDPAT2l3M9Y/WD5zEtVMWPI/AAAAAAAAO4U/shj-gPt1uH4OAcnRqtw_H0Mo_1iOVhW7QCLcB/s1600/block_diagram-e1444082440229.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="532" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nDPAT2l3M9Y/WD5zEtVMWPI/AAAAAAAAO4U/shj-gPt1uH4OAcnRqtw_H0Mo_1iOVhW7QCLcB/s640/block_diagram-e1444082440229.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />DeepMind's research into analyzing medical imagery is already set to be integrated into its UK NHS collaboration, according to the Guardian in an article titled, "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/05/google-deepmind-nhs-machine-learning-blindness">Google DeepMind pairs with NHS to use machine learning to fight blindness</a>," which reports:<br /><blockquote><i>Google DeepMind has announced its second collaboration with the NHS, working with Moorfields Eye Hospital in east London to build a machine learning system which will eventually be able to recognise sight-threatening conditions from just a digital scan of the eye.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>The collaboration is the second between the NHS and DeepMind, which is the artificial intelligence research arm of Google, but Deepmind’s co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, says this is the first time the company is embarking purely on medical research. An earlier, ongoing, collaboration, with the Royal Free hospital in north London, is focused on direct patient care, using a smartphone app called Streams to monitor kidney function of patients.</i></blockquote>In essence, those who control AI technology have access to algorithms that can perform specific tasks better than any trained human can. This confers on those who control this technology an immense advantage and creates disparity those without AI technology have no means of competing against.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Corporations and nations wielding this power, as the number of applications expands, represent an alarming, emerging disparity that may lead to the same sort of abuses and exploitation other forms of technological disparity throughout history have wrought.<br /><br /><b>Democratizing AI&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Effort into developing AI applications involves big-data. Training machines rather than merely programming them, means exposing them to large amounts of information they can sift through and train themselves with. In order to do this, not only do large amounts of information need to be collected, they need to be tagged or otherwise classified so machines have a baseline to improve against.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yapWVXmod6U/WD5zqdhidUI/AAAAAAAAO4c/zlM7XYMMiBYfkJPfp7tQY1gk-XEezrraACLcB/s1600/deep_learning_developer_box_h425px.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yapWVXmod6U/WD5zqdhidUI/AAAAAAAAO4c/zlM7XYMMiBYfkJPfp7tQY1gk-XEezrraACLcB/s400/deep_learning_developer_box_h425px.png" width="393" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Image:</b> A deep learning developer box, <a href="https://www.cadnetwork.de/de/solutions/deep-learning">via CADnetwork</a>.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>The development of these large data sets, as well as developing algorithms to exploit them, requires (at the moment) large numbers of participants outside of corporations like Google and their subsidiaries like DeepMind.<br /><br />Toward that end, opensource software libraries for machine learning, like <a href="https://www.tensorflow.org/">Google's TensorFlow</a> are available online for free. GitHub, an online development repository, <a href="https://github.com/showcases/machine-learning">offers access to a wide range of other available machine learning libraries</a> coders and programmers can use.<br /><br />The physical hardware currently being used to build deep learning machines include GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) similar to those found in high-end gaming computers. <a href="http://graphific.github.io/posts/building-a-deep-learning-dream-machine/">Instructions are online</a> on how to build deep learning machines, including information provided <a href="https://developer.nvidia.com/devbox">by companies like NVIDIA</a> which make commercially available GPUs. <br /><br />While it remains to be seen what individual or independent groups of developers can achieve in terms of democratizing this technology, it may be in the best interests of nation-states to begin developing their own AI programs rather than wait for Google, Facebook, and even China's Baidu to "share" this technology with them.<br /><br />It may also be in their best interests to examine the merits of promoting the democratization of this technology. Where a lack of resources to acquire high-level researchers at an institutional level exists, democratizing and thus tapping a larger pool of talent to even the odds in the AI race while also raising public literacy regarding this increasingly pivotal technology may be an alternative option.<br /><br />Research into AI cannot be "banned" and breakthroughs cannot be "un-invented." With the tools already widely (and in some cases, freely) available to advance AI, attempts to put this civilization-changing technology "back in the box" will only waste time and resources. The only way to counter the harmful application of AI is by possessing an equal or greater capacity to utilize the technology and increase the number of people both educated in how it works, and capable of applying it in reaction to harmful exploitation of it. <br /><br />Just like information technology, nuclear weapons, or even firearms tilted the global balance of power in favor of those who initially wielded them before more acquired and exploited these technologies, AI too poses a threat unless and until it is more widely adopted and democratized.<br /><br />With the power to focus on and master any task at superhuman levels, we ignore the challenge to balance this emerging power at our own peril.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i><br />&nbsp;<br /></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-imperative-to-democratize.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-7907744532991332080Sun, 27 Nov 2016 16:57:00 +00002016-11-27T08:57:45.940-08:00agricultureaquacultureAquaponics Expert JD Sawyer Talks About Healthy Food Self Sufficiency<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>November 27, 2016</b> (<a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2016/11/can-achieve-healthy-food-self-sufficiency-aquaponics.html">Activist Post</a>) - In this segment of The Vin Armani Show, our interview guest is JD Sawyer of Colorado Aquaponics and The Aquaponic Source. Aquaponics is one of the most powerful technologies for individual liberty, security, and health. We find out why.Visit The Aquaponic Source at <a href="http://www.theaquaponicsource.com/">http://www.theaquaponicsource.com</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k8-9UICMgD4" width="560"></iframe></div><br /><i>Vin Armani is the host of The Vin Armani Show on <a href="http://www.activistpost.com/">Activist Post</a>, TV Star of Gigolos on Showtime, Author, DJ, and Agorist Entrepreneur. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/vinarmani">Vin on Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/VinArmani">subscribe on YouTube</a>. Get the weekly podcast on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-vin-armani-show/id1176246726?mt=2">iTunes</a> or <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/activist-post/vin-armani-show?refid=stpr">Stitcher</a>.</i></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/aquaponics-expert-jd-sawyer-talks-about.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-3553758821531411707Fri, 25 Nov 2016 23:31:00 +00002016-11-25T15:31:04.179-08:00artificialIntelligencebiotechITSciTechAI & Biotech: Striking a Technological Balance of Power <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>November 26, 2016</b> (Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - During World War 2, nations desperately raced to harness the atom. The United State ultimately won that race, and during their victory lap - being the sole nation to possess nuclear weapons - used them against their enemy Japan - twice.<br /><br />Tens of thousands of lives were extinguished in the blink of an eye and Japan, already a defeated nation, submitted absolutely to US hegemony which would prevail both over Japan and most of Asia for nearly a century onward.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kZV_Buwy_B0/WDiipdpHkpI/AAAAAAAAO08/aBESQl9TxAA5GOXTAU2Dtw9IN72_JepzwCLcB/s1600/Atomic_bombing_of_Japans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kZV_Buwy_B0/WDiipdpHkpI/AAAAAAAAO08/aBESQl9TxAA5GOXTAU2Dtw9IN72_JepzwCLcB/s640/Atomic_bombing_of_Japans.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Images</b>: The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is what uncontested military superiority - or an imbalance of technological and military power - looks like. What will similar disparity in artificial intelligence or biotechnology lead to?&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US has used its immense economic disparity over the last seven decades to build a conventional army and employ various methods of overtly and covertly attacking, undermining, and even overthrowing the political and socioeconomic orders of targeted nations worldwide in its bid to take, hold, and expand global hegemony.<br /><br />It has used its domination of the media to sell wars, manipulate public perception, and project its socioeconomic, cultural, and military will to the far reaches of the planet.<br /><br />With the advent of the Internet and social media, its domination over both allowed it to plunge the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into chaos and eventually war in 2011 during the so-called "Arab Spring," a fact the New York Times in an article titled, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html">U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings</a>," would later admit.<br /><br /><b>Balancing Power&nbsp;</b><br /><br />With each form of tactical and technological disparity manifesting itself in military aggression, subjugation, exploitation, and immeasurable injustice, attempts to diminish that disparity have helped strike a balance of power.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CjL_i7dgAGM/WDi8t2rNvdI/AAAAAAAAO1Q/8RgzIsiSHVU5UIJ9xpz6o-qwcvzd0sxFgCLcB/s1600/1021422466.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CjL_i7dgAGM/WDi8t2rNvdI/AAAAAAAAO1Q/8RgzIsiSHVU5UIJ9xpz6o-qwcvzd0sxFgCLcB/s640/1021422466.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Image: </b>Russian mobile nuclear missiles and the reason why the United States never used nuclear weapons again.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviets, then later China, India, and Pakistan as well as several European powers, helped strike a balance of power within which no nation dared strike another with such weapons again.<br /><br />Asymmetrical warfare and increasingly sophisticated and prolific anti-tank and anti-air weaponry have allowed nations to raise the cost of US military adventures abroad to the point where direct military intervention has become all but impossible for the US (and other nations as well).<br /><br />The alternative media has brought to an end what was almost total domination by the Western media over global public perception - and it has done so not only with the emergence of effective state-run media beyond the West, but also through the efforts of thousands of individuals and independent networks worldwide.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>In other words, novelty provides those who pioneer and monopolize any given tactic or technology with an initial and significant advantage, but the democratization (widespread distribution) of these tactics and technologies minimizes this disparity and creates a balance of power that makes it difficult for any one party to take advantage of or dominate another.<br /><br /><b>Preventing Future Imbalances: Biotechnology&nbsp;</b><br /><b><br /></b>Perhaps the most &nbsp;frightening impending disparities humanity now faces are those in the fields of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TX610fwS1y4/WDi-Mi1jOqI/AAAAAAAAO1g/12QC9638S6EtPfGLIPt-46z9CTVs-4aKACLcB/s1600/ksmithrrlelectronic-microscope-room.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TX610fwS1y4/WDi-Mi1jOqI/AAAAAAAAO1g/12QC9638S6EtPfGLIPt-46z9CTVs-4aKACLcB/s640/ksmithrrlelectronic-microscope-room.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><i><b>Image:</b> South Africa's Rodeplaat Research Laboratories, where genocidal scientists under Project Coast sought to weaponize vaccines to sterilize, even eradicate the nation's black population.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The sequencing of the human genome has given rise to the practice of "gene therapy" - the ability to overwrite parts of an individual's genetic code. In other words, genetic code can now be introduced into living patients that show cells in the body <a href="http://www.cancerresearch.org/news-publications/video-gallery/emily-whitehead-beats-cancer-with-immunotherapy">how to find and eradicate cancer</a>, how to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11025689/Groundbreaking-gene-therapy-trial-offers-hope-to-heart-patients.html">rebuild heart muscles</a>, or <a href="http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/gene-therapy-for-type-1-diabetes-aims-to-eliminate-daily-insulin-injections/41450">how to properly produce insulin</a> in the case of patients suffering from diabetes.<br /><br />But if code can be introduced so precisely to do great good, it can also be introduced to do great harm. Vaccines laced with vectors delivering the genetic equivalent of malware could potentially, and very subtly, reduce fertility, diminish intelligence, and even manipulate gene expression associated with human behavior.<br /><br />The prospect of using the concepts behind gene therapy for biological weapons was mentioned in the Neo-Conservative Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) 2000 report titled, "<a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">Rebuilding America's Defenses" (.pdf)</a>. The chilling report stated (emphasis added):&nbsp;<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will make it much easier to project military power around the globe. Munitions themselves will become increasingly accurate, while new methods of attack – electronic, “non-lethal,” biological – will be more widely available. (<a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">p.71 of .pdf</a>)&nbsp;</i></blockquote>It also stated:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Although it may take several decade for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, <b>and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.</b> (<a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">p.72 of .pdf</a>)</i><i><br /></i></blockquote>And finally: <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i></i><i><b>And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.</b> (<a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">p.72 of .pdf</a>)</i></blockquote><div>By democratizing this technology, we ensure that the tools used to create and defend against <i>"biological warfare that can "target" specific geneotypes"</i> are in the hands of not only people who seek to do so already, but also in vastly more hands that seek to detect, prevent, or counter such abuses. Democratizing this technology also ensures that the people who need it most get it, rather than remain subjected to the whims and interests of a handful of corporations who seek profits over people and purpose. &nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Work toward democratizing biotechnology is being undertaken by both institutions and individuals alike, around the world through opensource biotech tools, and community "DIYbio" labs. Nations are also working to build up their biotech infrastructure, both as a component to their healthcare systems and economy, <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/07/zika-why-biotech-is-imperative-to-national-security/">and as a component of national security</a>.&nbsp;</div><div><br /><b>Artificial Intelligence</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Artificial intelligence, long before we must worry about sentient machines and what they may or may not decide to do with a vastly inferior humanity, is already being used in highly specialized applications ranging from automatically extracting intelligence from the millions of photos uploaded to Facebook daily, to gaming the stock market, to <a href="https://deepmind.com/blog/working-nhs-build-lifesaving-technology/">managing the UK's National Health Service (NHS)</a>, to <a href="https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-centre-cooling-bill-40/">automatically managing utility grids</a>.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>While many uses of AI are benign, the fact that so few institutions are engaged in high-level AI research and applications invites immense disparity and abuse. While AI applications today do not constitute a sentient being superior to humans in every conceivable way, they do constitute very focused algorithms that are vastly superior to any human performing the same specific task.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fh5bkld5tqQ/WDi-0TvqE5I/AAAAAAAAO1k/j8kYBXfHImMXV6SkBhBULmkSKNWX7AWKgCLcB/s1600/AlphaGo-Lee-Sedol-Aja-Huang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fh5bkld5tqQ/WDi-0TvqE5I/AAAAAAAAO1k/j8kYBXfHImMXV6SkBhBULmkSKNWX7AWKgCLcB/s640/AlphaGo-Lee-Sedol-Aja-Huang.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Google's DeepMind subsidiary, <a href="https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/">and their AI AlphaGo</a> was able to learn and then outplay the world's best Go player. Other developers are creating AI platforms that can learn through trial and error how to play various video games before eventually mastering them with super-human reflexes and strategies.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Applied to games, they are quaint. Applied to warfare and they are terrifying. The high-speed, ultra-deadly nature of the first Gulf War in which the technological disparity between the US and Iraqi forces left the fourth largest military on Earth in ruination and retreat will be tame in comparison if and when machine learning is applied to real-world military operations.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The increasing use of drones and automation, and the eventual combination of the two, will create a network an AI simply needs to plug into and direct, either entirely or temporarily, to grant its operators a super-human advantage over their unprepared opponents.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>And such contests need not be waged on conventional battlefields. Cyber and information warfare may also present a tempting battlefield upon which to deploy AI. Targeting the IT infrastructure of an opposing nation, or mass manipulating public perception with increasingly convincing AI 'bots" working ceaselessly to create the illusion of persuasive consensus, could overwhelm unprepared opponents.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jtMsuTXGjZo/WDi-5ho7QdI/AAAAAAAAO1o/YYVKaCUZkOEF-7Fb4rOvKpk7Vlu5C7VRACLcB/s1600/9cd6a0e38e6751582d17574a03e6990d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jtMsuTXGjZo/WDi-5ho7QdI/AAAAAAAAO1o/YYVKaCUZkOEF-7Fb4rOvKpk7Vlu5C7VRACLcB/s640/9cd6a0e38e6751582d17574a03e6990d.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Just like DeepMind's AlphaGo left its human opponent utterly, hopelessly defeated, so too would any military wielding a militarized AI algorithm. However, the ability to multiply force through the use of artificial intelligence is only an advantage if those it is being used against lack similar capabilities.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Artificial intelligence is not just a component of Facebook or Google's business strategy - US policymakers admit that AI, as well as companies like Facebook and Google themselves, constitute an integral part of creating, maintaining, and projecting American power globally. Nations must not look upon AI as a novelty or an economic asset, but also as a central component to national security. Nations depending on Facebook and Google to prop up their IT infrastructure rather than brewing their own national alternatives are akin to nations during the age of empires inviting British gunboats into their harbors.</div><div><br /></div><div>Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other forms of emerging technology must be viewed by each nation, state, community, and individual not as a mere novelty or potential industry, but also as a potential means to grant those who develop and monopolize it economic, political, and even military superiority history has taught us they most certainly will abuse.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Just like the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could never have fathomed the destructive power of the atomic weapons used against them, let alone anticipate they personally would fall victims to such weapons, we too allow ourselves to tempt fate by waiting for the first biological or AI strike before establishing a deterrence through a balance of power.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>We are increasingly connected and empowered by the Internet and other forms of technology already being democratized. We know about emerging technology and we can easily find ways to either raise awareness regarding these issues or directly involve ourselves in the actual process of democratizing this technology. We can and we must, lest we languish under the mushroom clouds and in all-consuming fire ignorance, unpreparedness, and technological disparity invites.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/ai-biotech-striking-technological.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-9040853339312243508Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:28:00 +00002016-11-16T11:28:44.739-08:00solutionsThere's a Real Revolution Taking Place, and It's Already Making a Difference <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>November 17, 2016</b>&nbsp;(via&nbsp;<a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/notmypresident-draintheswamp-the-real-revolution-is-already-here/">The Corbett Report</a>) - James Corbett of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/notmypresident-draintheswamp-the-real-revolution-is-already-here/">The Corbett Report</a>&nbsp;lays out the dimensions of a very real revolution already taking place. It is built upon pragmatic, technical solutions that liberate us from centralized monopolize of power, industry, finance, and society.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QVJo-3JbCdY" width="560"></iframe></div><br /><br />These include solutions regarding the decentralization of manufacturing, energy, finance, and much more:<br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #555555; margin-bottom: 15px;"></div><ul><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-303-solutions-the-peer-to-peer-economy/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Solutions: The Peer-to-Peer Economy</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-251-solutions-3d-printing/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Solutions: 3D Printing</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/anarchy-in-action-spontaneous-order/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Anarchy in Action: Spontaneous Order</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/dear-government-deliver-us-from-freedom/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Dear Government, Deliver Us From Freedom</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/p2p-solutions-an-open-source-investigation/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">P2P Solutions: An Open Source Investigation</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/solutions-freedom-cells/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Solutions: Freedom Cells</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-309-solutions-agorism/" style="color: blue; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Solutions: Agorism</a></li><li><a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-283-solutions-make-your-own-media/" style="color: blue; font-family: inherit; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Solutions: Make Your Own Media</a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Other articles, like this one&nbsp;<a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/fighting-real-deplorables.html">from LocalOrg</a>, relay a similar message, and together this quiet, "untelevised" revolution is already making a difference around the world - whether it is the organic food movement shifting the tides against big-ag, or the alternative media shifting the balance of power away from state-sponsored propaganda.<br /><br />You do not need to wait for the next election to oppose a system you see as corrupt. There are things you can do in your everyday life to deny this system your time, money, attention, and money, and direct it all towards building the sort of world you truly want to live in.&nbsp;</div><br />Read more at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/notmypresident-draintheswamp-the-real-revolution-is-already-here/">The Corbett Report here</a>. &nbsp;</div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/theres-real-revolution-taking-place-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-5571004532313708052Sun, 13 Nov 2016 18:12:00 +00002016-11-13T10:12:37.080-08:00solutionsFighting the (Real) Deplorables <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>November 13, 2016</b> (LocalOrg) - Across America, protests have broken out. They are small, poorly organized, and poorly led. They lack any realistic goal, so clearly, lack any actual plan to achieve any sort of goal. And unfortunately, they have become violent, embodying the very sort of hate, intimidation, and victimization the protesters claim they are fighting against.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9eBPQ_XM9qk/WCisLsSOIGI/AAAAAAAAOvs/lgzxT-aTnSgjhhE0jK9hl71C9OM5GP5WgCLcB/s1600/7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9eBPQ_XM9qk/WCisLsSOIGI/AAAAAAAAOvs/lgzxT-aTnSgjhhE0jK9hl71C9OM5GP5WgCLcB/s640/7.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />The truth is, as the protests currently exist, no matter how long they persist or how big they get, they will accomplish nothing positive, and instead, invite a wide variety of very serious negatives. <br /><br />All Americans, and those overseas looking in, must logically admit that neither Hillary Clinton nor now President-elect, Donald Trump, truly represented the American people. Neither were drawn from the people, neither have a record of service to the people, and both have been deeply entrenched in a corrupt system dominated absolutely by corporate-financier special interests. In many ways, both Clinton and Trump in fact constitute those special interests.<br /><br />This reality means that it is not &nbsp;"Clinton" or "Trump" that either side was voting for or against, but different aspects of the same corrupt system they find abhorrent and in desperate need of changing. It was not "Clinton" or "Trump" that people were voting for, but their opponents they were voting against. It was not the arguments each candidate made that convinced them, it was the arguments of candidates and commentary by the corporate-media that repelled them.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lk5khOizTZ0/WCiQl5FugZI/AAAAAAAAOuI/sM-evcPWnT49R871T98BLC78Yzk6mvYAgCLcB/s1600/CorporateMap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lk5khOizTZ0/WCiQl5FugZI/AAAAAAAAOuI/sM-evcPWnT49R871T98BLC78Yzk6mvYAgCLcB/s640/CorporateMap.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />It is a singularly corrupt system, using smoke and mirrors to convince at least a part of society to support at least a part of its continued existence, under either "right" or "left" cover.<br /><br />Hillary Clinton once infamously declared:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>...you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables...</i></blockquote>But the truth is, it is not Trump supporters, and not Clinton supporters - none of the American people who are "deplorables."<br /><br />It is the system that is deplorable. It is the corporate-financier special interests who are deplorable for monopolizing and dominating every aspect of the American people's lives for profit and power. It is the politicians who are deplorable for selling themselves to these interests while posing as public servants and representatives. It is the corporate media who helps both special interests and their pet politicians pander to the public, mislead them, confuse them, and most deplorable of all, divide them against one another.<br /><br /><b></b><br /><a name='more'></a><b>Fighting the Deplorables&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Here is where most commentary trails off into a rhetorical rant, peddling political ideals that are just as meaningless as a solution as the rhetoric that has created the problem at hand. Instead, it is far more constructive to explain to you that while a small handful of elite have taken a majority stake in both America and the world for their own benefit and at the cost of everyone else, there are very specific actions you can take right now to take your own stake, and use that to introduce an element of balance to both national and international power.<br /><br />At the heart of Washington there lies an engine of corporate-financier special interests. They are not simply men and women with immense amounts of money and power. They are men and women who control essential things required for civilization's continued existence, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, transportation, defense, technology, education, commerce, and monetary systems.<br /><br />To take your own stake in the game, you must do so by creating alternatives to these vast monopolies.<br /><br /><b>Toe-to-Toe With the Deplorables&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Big-agriculture, big-retail, big-oil, big-retail, big-pharmaceutical corporations, and big-banks (and many more). Any corporation or institution that enjoys a commanding monopoly over the essential functions of modern human civilization falls into the category of "deplorables." They hold the levers of modern civilization within their hands, and they are the ones that have directed us along the course we currently find ourselves on. They, not one half of the population they have convinced to think differently than the other before pitting both halves against one another, are the problem.<br /><br />Replacing them is the solution.<br /><b><br /></b><b>1. Big-Agriculture:</b>&nbsp;Food is an obvious essential every living being on Earth requires to sustain themselves. The control over a people's food supply has been instrumental for defining the "haves" and the "have nots" throughout human history. It is the most essential element to safeguard in order to achieve supremacy over another, and it is the most essential element to undermine when dismantling the source of another's power.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vrlKKPsOQVo/WCiUqFwULCI/AAAAAAAAOug/O29QKLWf18ct6gIyxgkByaP_lXerCljJACLcB/s1600/2564490.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vrlKKPsOQVo/WCiUqFwULCI/AAAAAAAAOug/O29QKLWf18ct6gIyxgkByaP_lXerCljJACLcB/s640/2564490.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Big-agriculture, including corporations like Bayer, Dow, BASF, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, John Deere, Tyson, and many others, not to mention the big-retailers they are partnered with to move their products and services, not only monopolize the American food supply, but threaten food security globally. They have not only deeply infiltrated governments, but have exerted unwarranted and insidious influence across the media directly, and indirectly through "independent third parties" that perform lobbying services without disclosing their status as lobbyists.<br /><br /><b>Solutions:</b> Fighting big-agriculture is easy, and it's already a fight that is well on its way toward victory. &nbsp;Networks of organic farmers, farmers' markets, urban agriculture networks, together with the alternative media and organic advocates, have already begun changing the tide, raising public awareness about:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The benefits of healthy, clean, organic food;</li><li>The empowerment that comes with community agriculture;</li><li>The economic benefits of more equally distributed agricultural entrepreneurship and;&nbsp;</li><li>The sociopolitical impact of taking a stake in our collective food security.&nbsp;</li></ul><div>And getting started is easy. There are entire networks that not only produce locally grown food for their communities, but have created infrastructure to teach absolute beginners how to get involved in agriculture, both rural and urban. Permaculture Voices hosts a variety of speakers sharing the work of their networks and is a good place to find one that suits you most.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1MNhtcagNO0" width="560"></iframe></div><br />One particularly impressive urban farmer is Curtis Stone of Canada. He is living proof that local agriculture is not only a theoretical solution to shifting the balance of power in the people's favor, it is a practical solution tangibly making a change.<br /><br />Something as simple as tearing up your lawn and planting a garden can be the pathway toward creating a sustainable and profitable business. At the same time, you are redirecting money locally your community would otherwise be channeling into big-ag by providing them with a superior alternative. It can be done, regardless of rules, regulations, and social pressures placed in your way, you simply need to be creative and determined enough to find the solutions - and likely, someone in the existing and ever-growing organic food movement has already faced and overcome such challenges. Seek them out and learn from them. There is no excuse.<br /><br />If you have energy to walk around in the streets all night destroying your neighborhood, you have energy to get together the next day and plant a community garden or start your own independent, socially responsible and prosperous farming operation. Be the change you want to see in the world.<br /><br />If you don't aspire to be a farmer, there are other things you can do:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Support local farmers and farmers' markets;&nbsp;</li><li>Grow a fraction of your own food in a home garden, even 1% is better than 0%,&nbsp;</li><li>Be more conscious when you buy, not only to shift the sociopolitical and economic paradigm, but for your health and;</li><li>Start a blog to advocate local, national, and international networks you see making a difference - the more voices out there, the harder it is for corporate-funded propaganda to drown them out.</li></ul>Creating a larger and more powerful organic movement, distributed among communities, but collectively representing the same basic principles of healthy, affordable, local food, creates another point of leverage against existing monopolies - the weight of policy demands backed by a physical network of producers, farmers, alternative media networks, and loyal customers who don't just buy their food to eat, but buy it because they know it is better, and comes from their very own community.<br /><br />It is a powerful point of leverage that is already putting demonstrable strain upon big-ag, forcing them to expose themselves, their methods, and true ambitions on public display, resort to ever increasingly desperate tactics, and expend vast amounts of resources to maintain what is becoming an unsustainable monopoly.<br /><br />Big-ag is happy to ignore protesters waving signs. They cannot ignore growing segments of the population eating food produced outside their monopoly. They can either reform, or live in a world increasingly moving on into the future without them.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7wkdExQCvZg/WCiUQxbHRPI/AAAAAAAAOuc/Tt6W0pGncFMIrmL3wyqYdCQF2o-llS6gwCLcB/s1600/Major-Oil-Companies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7wkdExQCvZg/WCiUQxbHRPI/AAAAAAAAOuc/Tt6W0pGncFMIrmL3wyqYdCQF2o-llS6gwCLcB/s320/Major-Oil-Companies.jpg" width="320" /></a><b>2. Big-Oil: </b>Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, coal companies, and the corrupt despots of the Persian Gulf who have built evil empires upon their fields of crude, blacken our skies and our lungs with their toxic fuels. Our power plants and cars have burned these toxic fuels for decades. While alternatives exist, and indeed, some nations - like Iceland - have moved beyond petrochemicals and coal, big-oil and energy monopolies have used their power and influence to perpetuate their monopolies and the centralization of energy production at the detriment of human civilization.<br /><br /><br />Whether or not you believe such fuels are contributing to climate change is irrelevant. You need only stand on a city street corner for 5 minutes during rush hour to feel your health being destroyed, or look at the wars and compromising political partnerships and rivalries our governments have become entangled in to realize an alternative is necessary.<br /><br /><b>Solutions: </b>Localizing energy production is not as easy as growing your own food - which is in itself probably not as easy as some might think. But it is also not impossible. Energy cooperatives exist all over the world already, ranging from wind and solar power to biogas production.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lMj9g0KEumU/WCiTyXFWRzI/AAAAAAAAOuU/2LSHNz8ftRcZOFBgMGF_cjzEQv5sDkwVwCLcB/s1600/cumbria9.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lMj9g0KEumU/WCiTyXFWRzI/AAAAAAAAOuU/2LSHNz8ftRcZOFBgMGF_cjzEQv5sDkwVwCLcB/s640/cumbria9.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />In Farmers Weekly's article, "<a href="http://www.fwi.co.uk/business/community-energy-is-the-future.html">Farm Power: Community energy is the future</a>," explains:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Involving local communities in renewable energy schemes can help farmers get projects off the ground and deliver benefits well beyond the farm gate.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>Community energy schemes are still in their infancy in the UK compared with elsewhere in Europe, but momentum is clearly building.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>More than 5,000 community groups have undertaken energy initiatives in the last five years and the publication of the UK’s first Community Energy Strategy (CES) last year promised a “step change” for the sector and a significant expansion over the next three years.</i></blockquote>The article goes on to detail just how such cooperatives work.<br /><br />Additionally, there are companies like US-based <a href="http://www.solarcity.com/">Solar City</a> that produces and installs solar panels on household rooftops, <a href="https://www.tesla.com/">Tesla</a> that produces electric cars and battery banks called <a href="https://www.tesla.com/powerwall">Powerwalls</a> for storing energy at home. These high profile companies have inspired many others across the country and around the world to begin moving solar power deeper into mainstream power production.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-esxMadpQ61Y/WCiT7GZOGpI/AAAAAAAAOuY/WB7boufmjDAzkhDpGxCh2IUVjsoCBinsgCLcB/s1600/shutterstock_106124045_7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-esxMadpQ61Y/WCiT7GZOGpI/AAAAAAAAOuY/WB7boufmjDAzkhDpGxCh2IUVjsoCBinsgCLcB/s400/shutterstock_106124045_7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>While in some cases, solar power is still a huge investment compared to living on the grid, prices are dropping toward a future where that isn't the case. Many already find solar power to be a better solution than drawing from centralized power grids, and in places where grids don't reach, solar already dominates power production.<br /><br />Solar power and other community or individually owned and operated power grids decentralizes another of human civilization's essential building blocks. The people themselves possessing complete control over this particular block, further lends them leverage against monopolies that for decades have used their control over energy to impose their will upon the fate of entire nations.<br /><br />There is a learning curve to overcome when getting into alternative energy but there are many people already out there doing it both for profit and to make a difference. Just as there are people among the organic movement willing to share their knowledge with those willing to seek them out and learn, so too are there people in the alternative energy community. Seek them out, and learn.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vYo8mcHI4n8/WCiZRfjbjhI/AAAAAAAAOvA/QX72iJTZZN8vUXR4En0fObgl1pG__VguwCLcB/s1600/WalMart_StopGIMP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vYo8mcHI4n8/WCiZRfjbjhI/AAAAAAAAOvA/QX72iJTZZN8vUXR4En0fObgl1pG__VguwCLcB/s320/WalMart_StopGIMP.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><b>3. Big-Retail:</b> Our food, our manufactured goods, our technology, and much more often comes from big retailers. In the US it is WalMart and Target. In Europe and Asia it includes BigC, Tesco, Carrefour, and other retailing monopolies. When these mega-stores open up, people trade in local socioeconomic independence for cheap junk consolidated for convenience in a single location.<br /><br />But what seems like a blessing at first, becomes a curse over time. Pretty soon, towns dominated by these big-retailers find themselves completely at the mercy of them and a handful of "chain" restaurants and specialty stores. Local development is nonexistent, because the summation of wealth is often created by working for these stores, and paid to them - much like exploitative and abusive "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store">company stores</a>" during the Industrial Revolution.<br /><br /><b>Solutions:</b> However, manufacturing can be brought back to our communities through advances in manufacturing technology and innovative institutions often called "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces."<br /><br />Computer controlled manufacturing such as 3D printing, laser cutters and computer-controlled routers have become small and cheap enough for individuals to use in their homes, but more often than not, they are found in makerspaces where even absolute beginners can get help in designing and manufacturing their ideas. The technology is not well suited for mass production, but it doesn't need to. It can deliver short-runs of items, or create other manufacturing systems that can be used for larger scales of production (molds, vacuum forming, etc).<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bJumkLrl7IY/WCiY6l04sNI/AAAAAAAAOu8/tCZaAz9BN_E9o0o1FC2bGEOUyhWXTm8twCLcB/s1600/08_firstbuild-hackathon-28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bJumkLrl7IY/WCiY6l04sNI/AAAAAAAAOu8/tCZaAz9BN_E9o0o1FC2bGEOUyhWXTm8twCLcB/s640/08_firstbuild-hackathon-28.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />China, famous for being the "factory of the world," already has seen the advancement of manufacturing technology chip away at its domination over mass production. Companies that once used Chinese factories to produce items can now afford their own machines which not only cuts out shipping costs, but gives them greater control over quality and customization.<br /><br />Makerspaces are popping up <a href="https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces">all over the world</a>. In North America and Europe they are virtually everywhere. Search online for the one nearest you. The people there are friendly and eager to expand their already growing community and are hungry for challenges related to the practical application of the tools, talent, and machinery they have in their spaces.<br /><br />For both ordinary people and aspiring entrepreneurs, makerspaces often serve as the starting line for entire companies and new innovations. Waiting for mega-corporations like Apple, IBM, Google, and others to lead us along is no longer necessary. When you want something, instead of paying into the local "company store," why not learn a new skill, make it, and perhaps even start a small business making more for your friends, family, neighbors - and with crowd sourcing like Kickstarter, to the rest of the world?<br /><br />We have gone <a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/2012/12/decenralize-big-retail.html">into great detail specifically on decentralizing big-retail</a>, including profiling some of the progress that was already made as early as 2012. Since then, so much more progress has been made, and the community is simply waiting for the rest of society to end their dependence on consumerism, and try their hand at being producers, designers, makers, and doers.<br /><br />And while there is an upper limit to what you can get at a big-retail store today, there is no upper limit to what can be made locally leveraging modern computer controlled manufacturing. Opensource car designs are being built in America in "microfactories" by a company called <a href="https://localmotors.com/">Local Motors</a>&nbsp;and represents a proof-of-concept in <a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/2012/11/decentralizing-vehicle-design.html">decentralizing something as formidable and centralized as the auto industry</a>.<br /><b><br /></b><b>4. Big-Pharmaceuticals: </b>Like big-ag, big-pharma is undoubtedly a deplorable. Corporations like GlaxoKlineSmith (GSK), Bayer, Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and many, many more, have been not only accused, but convicted in courts of law around the globe for <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2014/06/04/glaxo-s-china-scandal-exposes-big-pharma-s-ugly-underworld/">some of the largest cases of healthcare fraud and abuse in human history</a>. Yet they are still charged by governments around the world with the research, development, production, and distribution of medications human beings rely on to live.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIA-lfxBuDc/WCid8WMVDQI/AAAAAAAAOvQ/1LBRDXbQJFUI6v7fGA3f_NjJdxYTEXFegCLcB/s1600/2013-5-24_GSK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIA-lfxBuDc/WCid8WMVDQI/AAAAAAAAOvQ/1LBRDXbQJFUI6v7fGA3f_NjJdxYTEXFegCLcB/s640/2013-5-24_GSK.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />What's worse is that much of the "research and development" big-pharma is engaged in, is late-stage preparations to bring drugs to market - drugs that have been developed through public funding for years, sometimes even decades. These special interests have infiltrated regulatory and government bodies so deeply, they are able to acquire, then criminally exploit the results of publicly funded research for immense profits.<br /><br />Worse still, many of the products produced and distributed by big-pharma are either ineffective, or outright dangerous, many times being subscribed for symptoms and uses they were not even approved for.<br /><br /><b>Solutions; </b>While harder than both food production and energy independence, decentralizing human healthcare is still not impossible.<br /><br />Community labs (<a href="https://diybio.org/local/">a list of labs around the world</a>) built around the concept of do-it-yourself biology (DIYbio) are also spreading around the world. Makerspaces - with their special mixture of talent and technology - are able to quickly produce prototypes and opensource versions of expensive proprietary hospital and lab equipment otherwise inaccessible to community healthcare infrastructure. If enough people interested in healthcare and biology assemble at a particular makerspace, a lab is usually established. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BKwKR9-mrWA/WCidzTAbhNI/AAAAAAAAOvM/u8sd06AVwAINYJp2Dt_eq4KlB6oJk0tUACLcB/s1600/DIY-bio-graphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BKwKR9-mrWA/WCidzTAbhNI/AAAAAAAAOvM/u8sd06AVwAINYJp2Dt_eq4KlB6oJk0tUACLcB/s640/DIY-bio-graphic.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />In the US, there already is a program where <a href="http://makernurse.com/">makerspaces are actually being established within hospitals</a>, allowing nurses, technicians, and doctors to prototype and manufacture solutions to problems they encounter during their work. This concept is beginning to spread around the world to other hospitals where makerspace mainstays like 3D printing are being used for everything from creating physical models of patients' organs to assist in the planning stages for difficult surgeries, to creating customized hooks, fasteners, and attachments for existing equipment that are expensive or impossible to replace otherwise.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aodPEbnX_qg" width="560"></iframe></div><br />Makerspaces are also increasingly collaborating with university labs, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and institutions. This tangible progress in human healthcare helps open up the technology used to administer and advance it, lowering the overall costs in providing it to patients - a much more sustainable solution than subsidies alone.<br /><br />The collective knowledge communities acquire during these collaborations helps decentralize healthcare.<br /><br />In terms of pharmaceuticals, there are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5TkirrO-U">even groups working on opensource bioreactors</a> (basically just glass containers with computer controlled temperature, stirring, and mixing functions) and computer software to make brewing pharmaceuticals as cheap and as easy as a cooking recipe. While this exists more on the cutting edge of healthcare decentralization, it proves that it is possible, and the more people that get involved, the quicker it will go from cutting edge to commonplace. <br /><br />If you have an interest in medicine, biology, or human health, simply use your Internet search engine of choice and find a group active near you.<br /><br /><b>5. Big-Banks: </b>Currency is the lifeblood of commerce. Regardless of your economic system of choice, money is necessary to make it function. Control over currency and funding grants institutions and special interests immense power over commerce, and thus virtually every aspect of human civilization. Decentralizing this power introduces balance and reduces the scale of abuse one can exercise through any given monetary system.<br /><br />Alternatives are difficult to establish, but not impossible. And while current alternatives are not perfect, if one's interest is in monetary policy and monetary systems, then there is a growing community they can join to improve these alternatives.<br /><br /><b>Solutions: </b>Cryptocurrencies and crowd funding are two such innovations that are giving people alternatives to current monetary systems as well as the raising of funds for projects. <a href="https://bitcoin.org/en/">Bitcoin</a> is just one of several cryptocurrencies and there are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms including <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a> and <a href="https://www.patreon.com/about">Patreon</a>. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q1B0BRoJRkM" width="560"></iframe></div><br />Cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding help oil this system of alternatives growing from increasingly high-tech, decentralized solutions to the corrupt monopolies at the source of our sociopolitical and economic troubles.<br /><br />It should be noted that many alternative media sites, not only political, but covering all subjects, from science and technology, to entertainment and education - increasingly rely on sites like Patreon to channel funding from their viewers and expand their work in a sustainable and responsive way to what their audiences want. This stands in stark contrast to the sponsored media currently dominating Western audiences' attention, presenting them messages and perspectives that suit the corporate-financier interests funding them, not the people consuming their content.<br /><br /><b>Displace the Deplorables&nbsp;</b><br /><br />These are just 5 areas and but a handful of solutions among many where people are already working hard, all over the world, to build the sort of world they want to live in - a world in contrast to the injustice of centralized power and profits we currently live in. The immense problems we face today were not created by one person overnight, nor will they be solved by one person overnight. It will take many people, focusing in many different areas, patiently over time to collectively move the vector sum of human efforts toward something more equitable, just, and beneficial to us all.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fffn2f5CGD4/WCisuibDb_I/AAAAAAAAOv0/EJ9m05BegAAIAo1qeLs2ZCYhWLJkKdlYgCLcB/s1600/Farmers%2BMarket%2BHeader_a7b61bbe-74df-48ce-941c-11898697345b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fffn2f5CGD4/WCisuibDb_I/AAAAAAAAOv0/EJ9m05BegAAIAo1qeLs2ZCYhWLJkKdlYgCLcB/s640/Farmers%2BMarket%2BHeader_a7b61bbe-74df-48ce-941c-11898697345b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Of these 5 areas, you need not cover them all. If you committed yourself to just one of them, and worked incrementally over the next year to achieve even the scarcest of results, you will be further ahead than if you did nothing at all. Efforts, no matter how small, add up over time. When many people are working in parallel, these small incremental steps add up even more.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3lsgTRWnww/WCiszWcDP9I/AAAAAAAAOv4/U5QUqh0oKWYLRGAghsuPcv7lw6p0KBjPQCLcB/s1600/3D-Prining-in-Education.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3lsgTRWnww/WCiszWcDP9I/AAAAAAAAOv4/U5QUqh0oKWYLRGAghsuPcv7lw6p0KBjPQCLcB/s640/3D-Prining-in-Education.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />The only sure way to fail and effect no change at all is to resign yourself to the system currently at hand. Doing nothing, or worse yet, going out into the streets to create chaos, adds up over time as either nothing, or the destruction of what little you already have. <br /><br />Just as when we were children seeking greater independence, we were unable to obtain it by simply shouting, stomping our feet, and throwing a tantrum. We were required to grow up, acquire skills, apply them effectively, and create a life of our own, in our own way, to suit us rather than have a life imposed upon us by those we depended on. Likewise, as a society, we need to grow up, take an actual stake in this world of ours for ourselves. <br /><br />By controlling our food, water, energy, local manufacturing, monetary policy, and even our own healthcare, we invest in and derive from these efforts to our own, direct benefit. <br /><br />We must become the change we want to see in the world, not stomp our feet until someone delivers it to us. It is not "a way" to solve our problems. It is the only way problems can ever be solved. Do not join the protests, do not react to them. There is far too much work to be done to be distracted by them. Offer those who ask you about the protests to join you in a real revolution, one in which we set off to build the world we seek to live in with our own two hands rather than "demand" with our mouths.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: none;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/fighting-real-deplorables.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-7293357531595698863Wed, 12 Oct 2016 18:00:00 +00002016-10-12T11:04:37.263-07:00solutions10 Things We Should Be Doing Instead of Obsessing Over the 2016 Election <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>October 13, 2016</b> (LocalOrg) - Here is a list of 10 things Americans should have been doing to strengthen their communities and empower themselves sociopolitically, economically, and technologically over the past 2 years instead of having obsessed over the ultimately irrelevant process known as Election 2016.<br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MRSXFb9zowI/V_55vtaBiJI/AAAAAAAAOg8/Oc65OilKOkAqZxtJp7oaPAUvrXTkdzUZwCLcB/s1600/localOrg2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MRSXFb9zowI/V_55vtaBiJI/AAAAAAAAOg8/Oc65OilKOkAqZxtJp7oaPAUvrXTkdzUZwCLcB/s640/localOrg2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>It is ultimately irrelevant because regardless of who wins, just like in 2008 when Barack Obama took office, all of the abuses and wars raging now will continue, and all the wars meant to begin under the previous president will be justified and executed under whoever the new president happens to be.<br /><br />Imagine if you accomplished even one of these 10 things in the list below over the past 2 years, and if many more did so as well. What a world we would live in instead of clinging to the false hope of some establishment representative finally "changing things" for us instead of just stringing us along for another 4 years...<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b></b><br /><a name='more'></a><b>1.</b> Start a local organic farm: <a href="http://theurbanfarmer.co/">http://theurbanfarmer.co/</a> (takes about 1-2 years if you seek guidance from others already doing it).<br /><br /><b>2.</b> Visit your local makerspace/hackerspace to learn a new skill&nbsp;<a href="https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces">https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces</a> (can take as little as 1-2 weeks to learn a new skill)<br /><br /><b>3.</b> Use that new skill to start a local business, replacing/disrupting an established monopoly. (1-2 years)<br /><br /><b>4.</b> Replace a percentage of your power consumption with solar.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.solarcity.com/">http://www.solarcity.com/</a><br /><br /><b>5.</b> Replace a percentage of your big-retail food with food grown locally and sold at your local farmers' market.<br /><br /><b>6.</b> Visit your local community lab to learn more about disrupting big-pharma monopolies. <a href="https://diybio.org/local/">https://diybio.org/local/</a><br /><br /><b>7.</b> Grow a fraction of your own food in your own part-time hobby garden;<br /><br /><b>8.</b> Go online and teach yourself a new skill for free instead of wasting money (and ending up in debt) on a formal education&nbsp;<a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm">https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm</a> (or learn IT skills on YouTube regarding almost any topic from 3D design to programming)<br /><br /><b>9.</b> Buy a <a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/2014/11/3d-printing-and-age-of-disruption.html">3D printer</a> and start your own 3D design and printing service (would take about 2 years to learn everything and get good enough at it to provide a basic service for friends, family, community, and colleagues).<br /><br /><b>10.</b> Start your own blog about politics, technology, farming, gardening or anything else constructive and empowering to create networks, share information, and inspire others to break free of the current Wall Street-Washington controlled paradigm.</blockquote>None of these will transform the world overnight. However, none of the problems we face were created overnight nor will they be fixed overnight. Our problems weren't created by a single person nor will they be solved by a single person or single solution.<br /><br />It will take lots of effort along many fronts by many people to create the world we want to live in - but only if we are committed to building that world ourselves, with our own two hands, instead of constantly deferring this responsibility to others how have demonstrated they have no intention of doing so.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;, trebuchet, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><b style="font-size: 15.4px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/" style="color: #1155cc;">LocalOrg</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15.4px;">&nbsp;seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.</span></i></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/10/10-things-we-should-be-doing-instead-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-6372415975987200296Sun, 02 Oct 2016 17:42:00 +00002016-10-02T10:42:12.491-07:00ITGoogle’s Jigsaw: Undermining Alternative Media<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>October 3, 2016</b> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4RkiiW-gtc&amp;spfreload=5">NewsBud</a>) -&nbsp;In this premier episode of The Geopolitical Report with Kurt Nimmo, we examine Google’s Jigsaw, an emerging technology that will be used on the internet to counter speech and ideas considered “extremist” by the global elite. Initially beta tested on radical Islamists, we demonstrate how Google and its partners plan to leverage the technology to marginalize and ultimately eliminate opposition to the establishment.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g4RkiiW-gtc" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div style="text-align: left;">See more via NewsBud's <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdHZela1qTNM9iIw2YxenIw">YouTube channel here</a></b>.&nbsp;</div></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/10/googles-jigsaw-undermining-alternative.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-1903959111993404437Sun, 02 Oct 2016 17:39:00 +00002016-10-02T10:39:14.956-07:00Facebook, Twitter, Western Media Attempt to Reassert Monopoly Over "Truth" <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;">A network whose members have literally ended the lives of millions with their lies, propose to police the web and verify the truth.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><b>October 3, 2016</b>&nbsp;(<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/02/facebook-twitter-western-media-attempt-to-reassert-monopoly-over-truth/">Ulson Gunnar - NEO</a>) - In a surreal and stunning example of 21st century propaganda and censorship, Google has cobbled together a coalition it is calling "First Draft" to tackle what it calls&nbsp;<i>"misinformation online."&nbsp;</i><br /><i><br /></i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sG96s2aryew/V-f1lZWBq-I/AAAAAAAAOWw/UAdKkmIdkQMiXIQWXvouGj95zUdpL4QJgCLcB/s1600/logos-v12-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sG96s2aryew/V-f1lZWBq-I/AAAAAAAAOWw/UAdKkmIdkQMiXIQWXvouGj95zUdpL4QJgCLcB/s640/logos-v12-1.png" width="592" /></a></div><i><br /></i>First Draft's "founding partners" include News Corporation's (parent company of Fox News) Storyful and NATO think tank Atlantic Council's "Bellingcat" blog, headed by&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2015/08/17/who-is-the-wests-lead-mh17-investigator/">formally unemployed social worker Eliot Higgins</a>&nbsp;who now fashions himself as a weapons expert and geopolitical analyst despite no formal training, practical real-world experience or track record of honest, unbiased reporting. In fact, between News Corporation and Bellingcat alone, Google's First Draft appears to be itself a paragon of, and nexus for&nbsp;<i>"misinformation online."&nbsp;</i><br /><i><br /></i><b></b><a name='more'></a><b>Google's Glaring Conflicts of Interest&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Google too, having for years now worked closely&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/30/the-lingering-danger-of-google-facebook/">with the US State Department</a>, faces its own conflicts of interest in&nbsp;<i>"social newsgathering and verification."&nbsp;</i>In fact, Google has admittedly been involved in engineering intentional deceptions aimed specifically to skew public perception, including&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/05/clinton-campaigners-use-pokemon-go-to-literally-lure-voters/">doctoring its maps and Google Earth in real-time</a>&nbsp;amid conflicts in favor of US-backed militant groups and through the development of applications designed to psychologically target the Syrian government into capitulating before US-backed militant groups.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9VdlD1exec4/V-f4f2IK-nI/AAAAAAAAOW8/hewAIejLn3Mmjf03h3sbri2_io6u_PE9wCLcB/s1600/hillary-clinton-at-google-1406029179.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9VdlD1exec4/V-f4f2IK-nI/AAAAAAAAOW8/hewAIejLn3Mmjf03h3sbri2_io6u_PE9wCLcB/s640/hillary-clinton-at-google-1406029179.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />The UK Independent in its article, "<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-syria-rebels-defection-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-a6946121.html">Google planned to help Syrian rebels bring down Assad regime, leaked Hillary Clinton emails claim</a>," would report that:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton's leaked emails have reportedly revealed.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and 'give confidence' to the rebel opposition.</i></blockquote>The article would continue:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The email detailing Google's defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company's New York-based policy think tank.</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>In a July 2012 email to members of Clinton's team, which the WikiLeaks release alleges was later forwarded to the Secretary of State herself, Cohen reportedly said: “My team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.”</i></blockquote>Cohen would conclude:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>“Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition.”</i></blockquote>Can Google then be relied upon to sort out&nbsp;<i>"misinformation online"</i>&nbsp;if it itself is directly involved in manipulating public perception to achieve US foreign policy objectives? To impartial observers, the answer is clearly&nbsp;<i>"no."</i><br /><br />First Draft would publish on its website a post titled, "<a href="https://firstdraftnews.com/social-networks-unite-global-newsrooms-take-action-misinformation-online/">Social networks unite with global newsrooms to take action against misinformation online</a>," adding further details behind the alleged rationale of the coalition. It would state:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Today, news breaks online. Today, the first images to emerge from a breaking news event have been captured by an eyewitness. Today, injustices that may never have been reported become global news stories because a bystander reached for their smartphone. Today, malicious hoaxes and fake news reports are published in increasingly convincing and sophisticated ways.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>We live in a time when trust and truth are issues that all newsrooms, and increasingly the social platforms themselves, are facing. In July, the Guardian’s Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner wrote about the ways technology is disrupting the truth, explaining “in the news feed on your phone, all stories look the same – whether they come from a credible source or not.” Filtering out false information can be hard. Even if news organisations only share fact-checked and verified stories, everyone is a publisher and a potential source.</i></blockquote>The members that constitute the First Draft coalition, however, have enjoyed an uncontested monopoly for decades in determining just what the "truth" actually is, as well as a monopoly over propagating things the global public now know for a fact were "untruths." Again, we see another case of the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.<br /><b><br />The Liars Who Lied About WMDs in Iraq Will Protect Us from Liars Online?&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Indeed, many of the organizations that constitute First Draft's coalition played a pivotal role in perhaps the most destructive and costly lie of the 21st century (to date), that involving alleged "weapons of mass destruction" or "WMDs" in Iraq, serving as the pretext for the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_RdxIiIjKt8/V-f4wHOB35I/AAAAAAAAOXA/VlTgDIkpcHQaypkbufSs2U7ePwCGzEyRQCLcB/s1600/US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_RdxIiIjKt8/V-f4wHOB35I/AAAAAAAAOXA/VlTgDIkpcHQaypkbufSs2U7ePwCGzEyRQCLcB/s640/US_Navy_030402-N-5362A-004_U.S._Army_Sgt._Mark_Phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_Rumaylah_Oil_Fields_in_Southern_Iraq.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />According to some estimates, up to a million perished in the initial invasion and subsequent occupation. More conservative estimates are still in the hundreds of thousands.<br /><br />Undoubtedly, the invasion, justified by lies propagated across the entirety of US and European media, helped trigger a predictable chain of catastrophes that have left the Middle East to this day in conflict and ruination. These same US and European media organizations, the same ones now signing their names to First Draft, also helped justify the continued presence of US troops in Iraq for years after the invasion, up to and including today.<br /><br />And the same names signed on to First Draft are also the same names who helped sell the disastrous intervention in Libya and who are now attempting to sell yet another direct Western military intervention in Syria.<br /><br />And it is perhaps the lack of success these same names are having in selling this most recent potential intervention in Syria that has precipitated First Draft's creation in the first place.<br /><br />There is a burgeoning alternative media composed of individual independent journalists, analysts and commentators both biased and impartial, both professional and amateur, competing directly with and overcoming the West's longstanding monopoly over international public perception. There is also the emergence of professional and competitive national media organizations across the developing world who are taking increasingly large shares of both the West's media monopoly and its monopoly over the public's trust.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pnbtchplWzQ/V-f5GcFSnPI/AAAAAAAAOXE/VRjrs5GrQE8-f0JGL5mAp1KfNSssuKTzwCLcB/s1600/1027852610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pnbtchplWzQ/V-f5GcFSnPI/AAAAAAAAOXE/VRjrs5GrQE8-f0JGL5mAp1KfNSssuKTzwCLcB/s640/1027852610.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />It is clear that First Draft has no intention of protecting the truth as none among its membership have done so until now individually, but rather in collectively protecting what the special interests behind these organizations want the global public to believe is the truth. First Draft is a desperate measure taken by Western special interests to reassert the West's dominance over global public perception by leveraging the widely used social media platforms it controls, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as IT giant Google and its large range of services and applications.<br /><br />In the end, all that First Draft is likely to accomplish is convincing the developing world of the necessity of creating domestic alternatives to Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as to continue expanding their own domestic media organizations to better represent their respective national interests upon the global stage and to dilute the dangerous and destructive media monopoly the West has enjoyed and abused for decades.<br /><br />Until the members of First Draft can cite a lie told by their competitors that is as destructive and as costly as their own lies preceding and underpinning the invasion and occupation of Iraq or the more recent destruction of Libya, their efforts appear more as a means of further deflecting away from the truth, not defending it.<br /><br />&nbsp;<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 18.48px;">Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “<a href="http://journal-neo.org/" style="color: #6fa8dc; text-decoration: none;">New Eastern Outlook</a>”.</i></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/10/facebook-twitter-western-media-attempt.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-3551084218956097696Fri, 16 Sep 2016 14:30:00 +00002016-09-16T07:30:02.636-07:00ITSciTechFacebook, Internet.org, and the End of Net Neutrality <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="tr_bq"><b>September 16, 2016</b>&nbsp;(<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/09/16/facebook-internet-org-and-the-end-of-net-neutrality/">Tony Cartalucci - NEO</a>) - American-based aerospace company SpaceX is one of the few Western enterprises pursuing a greater purpose in a nation otherwise obsessed with power and profit. When its rocket was recently lost on the launch pad amidst an anomaly it took with it a satellite to be used by Facebook, an example of the latter.&nbsp;</div><div class="tr_bq"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EQBZoLBtJ4M/V8vmT6oaxYI/AAAAAAAAOPc/ZZ5NznhgGccr_Q__m-7-lBVnHoBIBsEyACLcB/s1600/fqvi1nkhs6z7zpgmvcbg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="344" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EQBZoLBtJ4M/V8vmT6oaxYI/AAAAAAAAOPc/ZZ5NznhgGccr_Q__m-7-lBVnHoBIBsEyACLcB/s640/fqvi1nkhs6z7zpgmvcbg.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="tr_bq"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="tr_bq">The Guardian in an article titled, "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/01/mark-zuckerberg-spacex-explosion-africa-internet">SpaceX rocket explosion: Mark Zuckerberg laments loss of Internet.org satellite</a>," would report:&nbsp;</div><blockquote><i>Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg struck a bitter tone in his response to the explosion of the SpaceX rocket carrying a satellite intended for use on his Internet.org project in Africa.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>Writing on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said: “As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.”</i></blockquote>However, while technically Facebook's Internet.org would provide "connectivity" to people across the continent, it would not be providing them with access to the actual Internet.<br /><br />Instead, it is Facebook's version of the Internet, where the concept of net neutrality - the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites -&nbsp;does not exist.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>On Facebook's version of the Internet, only those willing to pay large sums of money can have access to audiences while others who do not pay, no matter how popular or meaningful their message may be, are essentially silenced. This is already a reality across Facebook's social network itself, and this network is one of several "Free Basics" offered on Facebook's Internet.org.<br /><br /><b>Internet.org by Facebook Aims to Control the World, Not "Connect" It&nbsp;</b><br /><br />A visit to&nbsp;<a href="https://info.internet.org/en/">Facebook's Internet.org</a>&nbsp;reveals meaningless slogans and images of smiling brown people.<br /><br />Looking past the superficiality at what Internet.org truly represents, it is clear that it is an attempt to takeover and monopolize the telecom industry and in particular, the entire Internet across the developing world. Not only does Facebook's "Free Basics" limit users to information highly controlled by Western corporate-financier special interests and Facebook's own&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/24/facebook-colonialism-2-0/">net neutrality-usurping algorithms</a>, but because the infrastructure employs methods including space-based satellites, the governments and communities exposed to this upturned version of the Internet have no say or control over it.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nYKDaxy9UZk/V8vlxDIRLoI/AAAAAAAAOPY/OMe8WP03uBsNrgvXzy8LUahsFNwobb5DgCLcB/s1600/3600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nYKDaxy9UZk/V8vlxDIRLoI/AAAAAAAAOPY/OMe8WP03uBsNrgvXzy8LUahsFNwobb5DgCLcB/s640/3600.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />So obvious is this, that even before Facebook has completed its plans, nations are already fighting back.<br /><br />In India, net neutrality activists succeeded in getting the invasive, manipulative, and monopolizing service banned from the country. The Guardian's article, "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/08/india-facebook-free-basics-net-neutrality-row">India deals blow to Facebook in people-powered 'net neutrality' row</a>," would report:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Facebook has lost the right to offer its free mobile internet service in India after the country’s telecoms regulator ruled in favour of net neutrality, marking the end of an intense and very public 11-month national debate.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>The new regulations published by India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) ban differential pricing for data services, and make it easier for smaller firms to compete with established companies including Facebook.</i></blockquote>Facebook's response was as unsurprising as it was dishonest, claiming:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Our goal with Free Basics is to bring more people online with an open, non-exclusive and free platform. While disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the internet and the opportunities it brings.</i></blockquote>In reality, in order to eliminate barriers and connect people, the people themselves must acquire the skills and resources necessary to create their own infrastructure, companies to maintain it, and the ability to create their own content to transmit over it - the very embodiment of both the Internet itself and the underlying hope proponents of net neutrality hold for the Internet. The people using the Internet in their nation should be the primary benefactors of it - not just in terms of having access to useful information, but the ability to earn a living by maintaining its infrastructure.<br /><br />In addition to Facebook's ability to penetrate and monopolize any given developing nation's telecom industry,&nbsp;<a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/30/the-lingering-danger-of-google-facebook/">considering Facebook's ties to the US State Department and its &nbsp;role in facilitating regime change</a>&nbsp;and even destructive, violent campaigns of armed subversion, it is very likely Facebook's monopoly would make it that much easier to control and manipulate information space in any given developing nation during a Western-engineered crisis.<br /><br />This may explain why legitimate nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in India stood up to Facebook's attempt to undermine net neutrality, but nations where NGOs are dominated by US State Department and Open Society funding like Thailand and the Philippines, Facebook's Internet.org has gone unopposed.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0IBkbq1mkJk/V8vm_aQitCI/AAAAAAAAOPg/IZSErJ0J6_89QGGAzkg6Cd6doaFILoIbACLcB/s1600/851f6000-b5cf-453a-9f23-f0144c93b50a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0IBkbq1mkJk/V8vm_aQitCI/AAAAAAAAOPg/IZSErJ0J6_89QGGAzkg6Cd6doaFILoIbACLcB/s640/851f6000-b5cf-453a-9f23-f0144c93b50a.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Image</b>: "Activists" complain about Thailand's alleged "single gateway" plan to control domestic Internet infrastructure, while Facebook attempts to construct a global "single gateway" it controls, completely unopposed by these same groups - groups generally funded by the US State Department and Open Society, two partners Facebook has worked with in the past and groups that have themselves taken part in training assisted or sponsored by Facebook. .&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Telecom and information technology, like food, water, energy, and a standing army, are essential building blocks for national security and prosperity. Handing the responsibility of any of these over to either a foreign nation or a foreign corporation - or both - is the relinquishing of one's sovereignty and the compromising of one's national security.<br /><br />Nations and their people must develop their own Internet infrastructure. For Mark Zuckerberg and his government-connected corporation Facebook to presume they are the sole solution to "connecting the world" is but a modern-day version of "The White Man's Burden" - those nations subjected to it subordinated to this domineering arrogance and the self-serving schemes that underpin it.<br /><br />Facebook's Internet.org is a wake-up call for developing nations to stand up and invest in modern day essential infrastructure - including domestic versions of social networks like Facebook - to ensure they are as safe in the field of information as their conventional armies keep them on the field of battle.<br /><br /><i style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 15.4px; line-height: 21.56px;"><span style="color: #444444;">Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine<a href="http://journal-neo.org/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">“</a><a href="http://journal-neo.org/" style="color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">New Eastern Outlook”</a>.</span></i></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/09/facebook-internetorg-and-end-of-net.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-2642259207539544866Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:34:00 +00002016-09-06T09:34:34.888-07:00alternative economyExploring Bitcoin and the Concept of Cryptocurrency <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>September 6, 2016</b> (LocalOrg) - Since the beginning of human civilization, money has taken one form or another. In modern times, currency has been effectively monopolized by financial institutions around the world. But with technology, is it possible to decentralize currency and put the power back into the hands of local communities?<br /><br />James Corbett explores this issue with&nbsp;Ken Shishido of the Tokyo Bitcoin Meetup Group.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q1B0BRoJRkM" width="560"></iframe> <br /><div style="text-align: left;">Check out more of James Corbett's work at <a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/">CorbettReport.com</a>.&nbsp;</div></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/09/exploring-bitcoin-and-concept-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-5045315953301715530Thu, 04 Feb 2016 22:00:00 +00002016-02-04T14:00:13.895-08:00biotechHealthGeneticsLiz Parrish - Bioviva - Ending Ageing through Gene Therapy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>February 5, 2016</b> (LocalOrg) - Agree or disagree with her methods, Liz Parrish and her company, Bioviva are taking gene therapy into their own hands in an attempt to circumvent the corrupt pharmaceutical monopolies, their representatives in the media and government, and shift the paradigm toward a more decentralized means of research and development. <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iO6KDac8g_E" width="560"></iframe></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/02/liz-parrish-bioviva-ending-ageing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-952131555584857461Sun, 03 Jan 2016 11:20:00 +00002016-01-03T03:20:16.776-08:00agricultureorganicFarmer Shares Tips For Getting Into Small-Scale Organic Farming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b>January 3, 2016 </b>(<a href="http://www.wpr.org/farmer-shares-tips-getting-small-scale-organic-farming">Wisconsin Public Radio</a>) -&nbsp;A farmer and author of a book about running a small-scale organic farming, said he has has found a way to make a good living on a one and a half acre organic farm.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kXUkBAiJANM/VokD4LdOKNI/AAAAAAAAMl4/cGzAQC4bkto/s1600/ak-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kXUkBAiJANM/VokD4LdOKNI/AAAAAAAAMl4/cGzAQC4bkto/s640/ak-18.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Jean-Martin Fortier, author of "The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-scale Organic Farming," said that no one really believes him when he says he does it without a conventional tractor.<br /><br />To encourage others who might have thought of this type of farming, he shared a few tips on his success:<br /><br /><b>Raised beds</b><br /><br />Fortier’s farm consists of 180 permanent raised beds. The beds are 100-feet long, 4 to 5 inch mounds of soil without a container around them. <br /><br />"After every two seasons, they tend to settle down so we need to re-raise them again," Fortier said. "With shovels or with the rotary plow, a tool that takes the dirt from the aisle and shoots it on to the bed like a shovel would do."<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.wpr.org/farmer-shares-tips-getting-small-scale-organic-farming"><i>Continue reading at Wisconsin Public Radio...&nbsp;</i></a></b></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2016/01/farmer-shares-tips-for-getting-into.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7079343630025538378.post-1777508309253253832Thu, 12 Nov 2015 11:02:00 +00002015-11-12T03:02:25.053-08:00biotechdiyBioHealthGeneticsBig-Pharma Seeks Monopoly Over Life-Changing Therapy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;">By dangling life-changing cures over people's heads for cartoonish figures of "1 million dollars," pharmaceutical corporations prove when they see sick, desperate, dying people, all they see is dollar signs...&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><b>November 12, 2015</b>&nbsp;(Tony Cartalucci - LocalOrg) - Gene therapy is a game changer. It is not a treatment for diseases. It is a cure.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hBBgDrtHcI0/VkRuRwBOjkI/AAAAAAAAMSc/Bitkvx4LKSA/s1600/gene_therapy1330813550942.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="276" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hBBgDrtHcI0/VkRuRwBOjkI/AAAAAAAAMSc/Bitkvx4LKSA/s640/gene_therapy1330813550942.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Image</b>: Gene therapy works by reprogramming an ordinary virus to delivery modified genes to human cells. Once introduced, the modified genes are replicated by natural cell division. Missing or defective genes, over time, can be replaced by repaired genes, reprogramming the immune system to eradicate otherwise incurable diseases, or creating function in defective systems, curing blindness, deafness, diabetes, and even effects owed to aging.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />It is a cure for cancer, genetic defects, blindness, deafness, diabetes, even potentially aging.<br /><br />It has already proven effective in clinical trials,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/resource-guide-penn-researchers-use-bodys-immune-system-target-leukemia/">curing people of leukemia who were otherwise certain to die</a>, giving people their sight back, and already, there is one therapy approved for use in the European Union with several others approved in China.<br /><br />The most remarkable aspect of gene therapy is that it overwrites your DNA once, then your cells replicate that new DNA each time they divide. In essence, the cure becomes a permanent part of you. One shot, one cure, for life, or close to it.<br /><br /><b>Why Haven't We Heard More About This?&nbsp;</b><br /><br />As remarkable and as promising as gene therapy is, it poses an immense threat to the established healthcare industry. A shot in clinical trials using experimental equipment that costs only 20,000 USD to produce that cures leukemia, if brought into mainstream medicine would be cheaper still, and undercut existing and ineffective"treatments" that can reach costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.<br /><br />Gene therapy, then, is essentially a disruptive technology that brings various healthcare rackets to an abrupt halt along with all the vast wealth and unwarranted power and influence big-pharma has enjoyed over the decades.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BtcSpn0zG1A/VkRq71mPCiI/AAAAAAAAMSQ/oxpcOk3JV64/s1600/OPENER_health-Penn-Medicine-Team-apr14_sd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BtcSpn0zG1A/VkRq71mPCiI/AAAAAAAAMSQ/oxpcOk3JV64/s640/OPENER_health-Penn-Medicine-Team-apr14_sd.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Image</b>: Dr. Carl June (center) led a team that developed a breakthrough gene therapy that effectively reprograms the immune system to hunt and kill leukemia cancer cells. Most of the patients, otherwise sure to die from their cancer, have gone into permanent remission.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />How can big-pharma continue on with its monopolies, wealth, and influence by curing everyone with one shot that costs almost nothing to make?<br /><br />Their strategy is two-fold. First, they have intentionally dragged their feet for as long as possible until they can figure this problem out, letting people die of now curable diseases simply because they want to protect their existing business models and bottom lines.<br /><br />Second, they have begun to mold public opinion through intense lobbying across the media and medical journals, ignoring the actual costs involved in producing the therapies, and instead cashing in on what they think it is worth to people, or in other words, dangling cures for crippling, deadly diseases over dying and/or desperate people's heads,&nbsp;<a href="http://localorg.blogspot.com/2015/03/op-ed-big-pharma-gene-therapy.html">and seeing how much they are willing to pay for them</a>.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a>The Washington Post, in its article, "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gene-therapies-offer-dramatic-promise-but-shocking-costs/2015/11/11/01f11cf0-824b-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html">Gene therapies offer dramatic promise but shocking costs</a>," writes (emphasis added):<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>A gene therapy approved in Europe in 2012 costs close to $1 million, and prices are expected to follow suit in the United States. The therapies in the pipeline are mostly for rare genetic diseases: sickle cell, hemophilia or immune deficiency.&nbsp;<b>Their likely high prices stem from the expected value;</b>&nbsp;unlike drugs that a person takes regularly, gene therapies are designed to be given once and have lasting effects.</i></blockquote>&nbsp;The Washington Post continues by reporting (emphasis added):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>But everyone involved anticipates the potential backlash against a seven-figure price tag, which is leading to radical proposals. Instead of paying for a treatment all at once, insurers and patients could make installment payments as long as the therapy works, similar to a mortgage on a house. Some researchers are adding up the cost of the traditional treatments that a patient will be able to avoid each year to determine a price that, although high, could lead to savings for the health-care system.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i><b>To Corona [a young woman whose eyesight has been&nbsp;improved&nbsp;by gene therapy], the gift of vision&nbsp;is something approaching a miracle. But how much is that miracle worth in dollars?</b></i></blockquote><br />Finally, the Washington Post concludes by saying:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Corona, who excitedly woke up her family in the middle of the night when she read about the possibility of gene therapy years ago, didn’t have to pay for her treatment, because she was part of a clinical trial.&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>But she said her family would have found a way to get her the therapy if it had already been on the market, even if it meant battling an insurance company or taking out a loan. After all, she said, it’s not only about seeing better. She now feels like a happier, more confident person. That part feels priceless.</i></blockquote>There seems to be nothing worse than exploiting human suffering, and the Washington Post has described perhaps the most blatant case-study of just such exploitation. It does not cost millions of dollars to prepare one of these therapies. Research may be costly, but is generally funded by taxpayers' money through government grants to research laboratories. With the potential gene therapy offers it is likely the public could be convinced to invest even more public money into the development of such therapies.<br /><br />Instead, what is happening, is public-funded research is then being handed over to corporations to commercialize these therapies. These corporations seek to minimize investments, and maximize profits and a complicit government is letting them do just that.<br /><br />In the case of leukemia-beating therapies developed by Pennsylvania University,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/08/novartis/">big-pharma giant Novartis swooped in only after clinical trials proved an astounding success</a>. Likely the most pressing issue holding back this revolutionary cure from saving more lives in the immediate future is not medical or technical, but rather how best to cash in on a literal cure for cancer. A&nbsp;<a href="http://articles.philly.com/2015-04-08/news/60907212_1_penn-and-novartis-carl-june-immunotherapy">recent patent dispute</a>&nbsp;has already delayed research that literally could make the difference between life and death.<br /><br /><b>An Alternative Reality &nbsp;</b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Imagine greater amounts of public funding going into the research and development of gene therapy. Imagine cures for diseases that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars or a ridiculous sum of 1 million dollars. And imagine open source journals publishing the results and findings as the field of gene therapy expands so other institutions both in the United States, and around the world could benefit from this revolutionary breakthrough.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P1l4lHzZHp4/VkRvZ7dPbpI/AAAAAAAAMSk/2GXz89tjHrk/s1600/Emily-Whitehead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P1l4lHzZHp4/VkRvZ7dPbpI/AAAAAAAAMSk/2GXz89tjHrk/s640/Emily-Whitehead.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Images</b>: Emily Whitehead today (left) after receiving revolutionary gene therapy developed by Pennsylvania University, and Emily Whitehead beforehand (right) at the end of failed conventional chemotherapy for her leukemia. Had she not received gene therapy as part of a clinical trial, she surely would not be alive today. Big-pharma believes only those willing to pay heavily for such "miracles" deserve to benefit from them.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Indeed, gene therapy can not only save public health programs money, they can transform them entirely. Imagine needing but a single shot to permanently cure your condition, instead of spending a lifetime seeing doctors, specialists, pharmacists, and insurance agents treating a persistent disease or condition. Image the burden that would be lifted off of local clinics, hospitals, and the public funds that could then be diverted elsewhere.<br /><br />We stand at the precipice of conquering human health by mastering it at the genetic level. It would be a step of historic proportions not unlike the industrial revolution, the information age, or the discovery of DNA itself. Unfortunately, stakeholders who have made immense fortunes and who have built entire empires on exploiting human sickness and all the desperation associated with potentially losing one's life or the life of a loved one, stand in the way.<br /><br />Not only are they standing in the way, they have begun to clearly draw a line publicly, defining just how this revolution will be harnessed to their benefit and at the expense of literally everyone else.<br /><br /><b>Fighting Back</b><br /><br />Wielding the power of gene therapy requires an understanding of biotechnology, the ability to use the tools and techniques of biotechnology in a properly equipped laboratory, with competent technicians, doctors, and researchers. Until recently, all of this required huge sums of financial support and the backing of the state, institutions, and/or large, well-established corporations.<br /><br />Today, however, the cost for much of the equipment used in biotechnology has come tumbling down. Open source tools and techniques are finding their way onto the Internet, and laboratories built by and for communities have begun springing up around the globe. Called DIYbio labs or community labs, they have so far focused on simpler goals, such as genetically testing food, re-engineering bacteria, or simply developing better versions of existing open source lab equipment, software, and protocols.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0kEE9KYnjxE/VkRp_QY76wI/AAAAAAAAMSI/qTEsjOVm80s/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0kEE9KYnjxE/VkRp_QY76wI/AAAAAAAAMSI/qTEsjOVm80s/s640/maxresdefault.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Image</b>: Liz Parrish has become the first of what is likely to be many, who has short-circuited big-pharma's attempted monopoly over gene &nbsp;therapy by developing and testing on herself two potential breakthroughs.&nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />A smaller and lesser known sub-culture known as "grinders," focus on DIYbio applied to human health. Many of the experiments they conduct are conducted on they themselves. The most extreme and relevant example of this involved&nbsp;Elizabeth Parrish, a 44-year-old CEO of the biotech startup BioViva, who conducted tests with two different experimental gene therapies on herself.<br /><br />Whether Parrish's experiments prove a success or not is irrelevant. According to MIT's Technology Review in an article titled, "<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542371/a-tale-of-do-it-yourself-gene-therapy/">A Tale of Do-It-Yourself Gene Therapy</a>," the actual process of preparing a therapy is not particularly complicated and can be done in any properly outfitted lab.<br /><br />MIT Technology Review states specifically (emphasis added):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Another prominent science advisor listed by BioViva is Harvard Medical School genomics expert George Church, who includes BioViva in a list on his website of around 100 companies he collaborates with. Church said last week he was also trying to learn what exactly had occurred in Latin America. “I think it is real,” he said in an interview. “There were some indications it might happen. Companies in stealth mode can do anything they want.”&nbsp;</i><i><br /></i><i><br /></i><i>Church says he didn’t agree with dodging regulators and added that BioViva appears to be “a one-person show.”&nbsp;<b>But he says he found Parrish’s claims plausible. A student in his lab, he says, could prepare a genetic treatment suitable for experiments in animals in a matter of days.</b></i></blockquote><br />If that is so, Parrish is likely only the first of many soon to follow. Faced with either a lifetime in debt to big-pharma, or even the prospect of dying from a curable condition big-pharma simply refuses to provide the cure for because of financial considerations, a growing number of people will turn to "labs" that could prepare genetic treatments at drastically reduced costs and with minimum or nonexistent barriers to accessibility.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekXpgWgkdgI/VkRwi7aGdUI/AAAAAAAAMSs/Irj5UrVoM0o/s1600/biosafe-level-one-100046745-orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekXpgWgkdgI/VkRwi7aGdUI/AAAAAAAAMSs/Irj5UrVoM0o/s640/biosafe-level-one-100046745-orig.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><i><b>Image</b>: Increasingly common around the world are DIYbio labs, or community labs where enthusiasts have begun to harness the power of biotechnology for their community's own benefit. The expansion of these local institutions stands to challenge the corrupt, inhuman monopolies erected by big-pharmaceuticals, and liberate humanity from what is for all intents and purposes a growing scientific and medical dictatorship. &nbsp;</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Dangerous? Yes. But if you are dying from cancer, and as big-pharma itself has pointed out, you're likely to do anything - whether it is putting yourself in debt to big-pharma for a million dollars, or rolling the dice with a treatment drummed up in an underground biopunk lab.<br /><br />As the capabilities of DIYbio labs grow in general, it will become increasingly possible for dedicated teams of citizen scientists and activists to reverse engineer existing therapies, reproduce them, and put them online in a biological version of existing peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Independent research and development toward human health applications and even gene therapy itself will also become increasing possible.<br /><br />Eventually, because of big-pharma's shortsighted greed, it will be displaced entirely by this growing network of localized medicine, all because it decided to turn this historic corner as plunderers instead of as enlightened leaders.<br /><br />For average people out there interested in getting involved, simply use your favorite Internet search engine, type in "<a href="http://diybio.org/local/">DIYbio</a>" and the city you live in or near, and start attending meetings, workshops, and participating in projects today. All great journeys initially start with single steps in more or less familiar surroundings, but collectively lead to something far more significant.<br /><div><br /></div></div>http://localorg.blogspot.com/2015/11/big-pharma-seeks-monopoly-over-life.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer)